


Reculer pour mieux sauter

by earlgreytea68



Series: Lucky [6]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-15 22:02:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8074288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: They have a daughter who speaks three languages and never goes to school without wearing a tie and is adept at wrapping everyone around her little finger.This is not at all anyplace where Eames ever imagined he would end up in life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I CRAFTED A WHOLE BEAUTIFUL A/N AND THEN A03, WHEN I WENT TO POST, LOGGED ME OUT TO PROTECT MY PRIVACY. WHYYYYY, AO3, WHYYYYY?
> 
> ANYWAY. 
> 
> Here is basically what my other a/n said: 
> 
> This fic has given me fits. I don't have a child myself, in full disclosure, but I have an Eames who lives in my head and this fic feels true to him and his feelings. There's a big of angst in it, but of course a happy ending. And hopefully it's not a huge hot mess. 
> 
> Thank you to arctacuda, who caught for me the chapter's big weakness, which I've hopefully addressed. Thank you also to knackorcraft, who gave me the French phrase Arthur and Lucky use. 
> 
> The title of the fic is also French. If I have it right it means: "To run back in order to give a better jump forwards; to give way a little in order to take up a stronger position" (http://www.bartleby.com/81/14132.html). Which is perfect for this fic.

Chapter One

Eames was in his studio, picking out paintings for the gallery show, and Arthur was in the garden, watering the plants. Lucky was following him, also watering the plants, because Lucky was reliably right in Arthur’s shadow whenever Arthur was home. Eames stood at the window for a little while watching them, relishing them. Arthur was pointing at things, and Lucky was nodding very seriously, her little face in a very Arthurian frown of concentration, and for a moment Eames felt washed over with a wave of love in a way that didn’t happen much anymore, because you just fell into patterns after years of living together, and you stopped being amazed by the mere sight of the people you loved. 

But Eames was feeling warm and indulgent and fond at the moment, watching the pair of them. So he was watching when Arthur’s phone rang, watching when Arthur wandered away, watching when Lucky, with a self-satisfied grin, ducked over behind the curve of the wall, into the shed where they stored the garden tools. Eames smiled, feeling like he could practically hear her giggles from there. 

Arthur ended his phone call, turned back toward the garden. Eames watched him, and what he was expecting was Arthur to play along with the game, to maybe call _Ollie-ollie-oxen-free_ and track Lucky down playfully. 

Instead Arthur called, “Lucky?” queryingly, and then, “Lucky!” urgently. 

Eames blinked, watching as Arthur turned in a circle on the spot and shouted, “Lucky!” as if he was panicked. 

Eames, surprised, called out the window, “Arthur, she’s—”

Arthur whirled to face him, as if he’d forgot that Eames had been in the studio. “Lucky’s missing.” 

“She’s not,” said Eames, confused. “She just—”

He was interrupted by Lucky skipping out of the shed. “I’m not missing!” she said, grinning with delight at her prank. “I was _hiding_.”

“ _Never_ do that again,” Arthur bit out at her viciously. 

“Hey,” Eames said, startled, and turned from the window to scramble out of the studio. 

“ _Nothing_ about that was funny, Lucky, do you understand me?” demanded Arthur. 

Lucky was staring up at him, her dark eyes wide with shock. 

Eames said, “ _Arthur_.” 

“I told you to wait for me, and you should have waited for me—”

“ _Hey_ ,” Eames said harshly, and stepped in between Arthur and Lucky. Not that he thought Arthur would get physically violent with Lucky but because it was the only thing he could think of to shield Lucky even a little bit from the pelting of Arthur’s words. He glared at Arthur, who blinked at him dazedly and took a step backward, looking…thrown. 

Eames turned to Lucky, whose eyes were now filling with tears, and Lucky never cried, it was a point of pride with her for some reason, and Eames worried about what he and Arthur had done or said that had given her that attitude. 

“Hey,” Eames said softly, reaching for her. 

She shook her head at him, a quick little jerk, taking a step back. 

“Lucky,” Arthur said behind him, his voice thick with anguish. “I’m so sorry, I—”

Lucky, her lower lip trembling in heartbreaking fashion, went running past them, through the door that led to the staircase that would take her back to the flat. 

“Oh my God,” Arthur said faintly, running his hands through his hair, and maybe he looked horrified with himself and maybe his hands were even shaking a little bit but Eames didn’t care because Eames was _furious_. 

“What the fuck, Arthur?” Eames demanded. 

“I don’t—” said Arthur shakily. 

“Don’t you ever speak to her like that. _Ever_. Even if she’d done something wrong, that tone was inappropriate, but all she did was try to play hide-and-seek with you, what the _fuck_.”

“I know.” Arthur sounded miserable. “Jesus, fuck, I—I have to apologize to her.” 

“Do you think so?” drawled Eames. 

“Christ,” Arthur said, walking out of the garden, and Eames, narrow-eyed, followed his progress. 

***

Lucky hadn’t closed her door. Arthur thought it wouldn’t have occurred to her. She hadn’t yet reached an age where she had started to withdraw from them, to stay secretive and solitary. Lucky actually hated solitude. Even now, as devastated as Arthur had made her, she had left her door open, inviting people in. 

Arthur marveled at her. He was quite sure that he had never been so open, so welcoming. So _trusting_. 

She was curled up on her bed, facing away from him, and Arthur hesitated, then knocked on the door. 

She rolled over to look at him and just glared accusingly, which was worse than anything she could possibly have said to him. 

Arthur wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t do things like this. He didn’t think he’d ever raised his voice to Lucky before, ever. He was pretty sure, given how horribly he felt about it, that he was never going to do it again. 

“Can I come in?” he asked finally. 

Lucky didn’t say anything. She breathed deeply in and then deeply out and just _looked_ at him. 

Arthur entered the room. He sat on her bed and curved his hand over her dear head, over the flyaway dark hair that covered it. When she had been younger, he’d kept her hair cut short, because he and Eames were both terrible at pulling hair back into a ponytail. But Lucky was old enough now to have developed her own opinions, and she wanted long hair, and so her hair was now past her shoulders, and he and Eames were still terrible at pulling it back into a ponytail, but it was what Lucky wanted and it made Lucky happy and the first rule of their household was to keep Lucky happy, the sound of her laughter, the delight of her smile, and what had Arthur _done_?

Lucky didn’t curve into his touch but she didn’t shrug him off. 

Arthur said, “ _Ma petite_ , I’m so sorry.” 

Lucky didn’t say anything. 

So Arthur kept talking. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.” 

Lucky rolled onto her back gently and looked up at him, silent and solemn. 

He said again, because he didn’t know what else to say, “I’m so sorry.” 

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” was what Lucky said finally. 

Arthur brushed her hair away from her face and said around the lump in his throat, “I know you didn’t. You just wanted to play hide-and-seek. I’m so sorry that I—”

“It’s okay,” said Lucky. “You were scared.” 

Arthur kept brushing at her hair. “I was scared,” he agreed. “I was so scared.” He leaned down to be closer to her. “Do you know why?” 

“Because you had a bad day at work?” Lucky guessed. 

Arthur almost laughed, because of _course_ Lucky would be clever enough to get that exactly right. Lucky wasn’t Eames’s genetically, but she read people with Eames’s ease, another thing Arthur envied about her. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I had a bad day at work. And I love you. _So_ much. You are the most important thing. And you were so good at hiding that I freaked out a little bit. Which is no excuse. I should never, ever, ever have spoken to you like that. And I’m so sorry. And I love you. I love you like crazy. _Je t’aimerai toujours quoi qu’il arrive_. Right?” 

“ _Je t’aimerai toujours quoi qu’il arrive_ ,” Lucky said, and sat up to curl into him in a fierce, tight hug. 

Arthur cuddled her to him and kissed the top of her head and said again, “I’m so sorry, Lucky.” 

“It’s okay,” Lucky said against him. 

“It’s not,” Arthur said. “I promise not to do that to you again in the future.” 

“Maybe,” said Lucky, “this would all be better with ice cream.” 

This startled laughter out of Arthur. Lucky was _so much Eames’s_ , he couldn’t stand it. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe.”

Lucky wriggled a little to draw back enough to peck a kiss onto Arthur’s nose, smiling the whole time, looking free and unclouded, as if everything was behind them. 

And maybe it was. Arthur didn’t doubt that Lucky knew he loved her. It was probably Arthur who was going to feel the worst about this whole thing going into the future, how Lucky had tried to play hide-and-seek with him and instead he’d panicked and shouted at her. For trying to play a _game_ with him. 

Arthur said, “I love you,” and kissed her nose in return. 

Lucky smiled sunnily at him and went running out of the room shouting, “Eames! Arthur says we can get ice cream!” 

***

Eames was quiet throughout the ice cream outing. Well, not to Lucky. To Lucky he was his usual amenable, gregarious self. To Arthur he was quiet. To Arthur he spoke the bare minimum and was a little bit abrupt. Not so much that it would alarm Lucky, who kept chattering happily, filling up the silence that usually was punctuated by Eames and Arthur smiling at each other, _Look at her, isn’t she delightful, aren’t we the luckiest people on the entire planet?_

Eames was clearly angry with him. Which Arthur was okay with because he deserved it. 

So he said, after they’d put Lucky to bed, “I know. I deserve it. I’m sorry.” 

“I’m not a five-year-old, Arthur,” said Eames shortly. “You can’t appease me with ice cream.” 

“I know,” said Arthur. “I’m not trying to—”

“I’m going to paint,” said Eames, and then turned and left Arthur standing there alone in their apartment. 

Arthur was unsure what to do. They argued, of course. They argued about who had been responsible for accidentally leaving Arthur’s favorite leather jacket outside in the garden when a rainfall had come on. They argued about whose turn it was to take Lucky to soccer practice, an act they both detested. They argued about who snored more loudly on a particular evening when neither of them slept well. They argued about Eames’s inability to squeeze the toothpaste tube from the bottom, which was hardly difficult, Arthur didn’t understand why Eames seemed so perplexed by it, and they argued about Arthur’s tendency to colonize the coffee table with work. But they didn’t argue like this. They argued with flash and fire, sharp cutting remarks that burnt out as quickly as they were said, and within ten minutes one or the other of them would go out of the way to offer up a kiss, and then everything was done. They didn’t argue like this. Arthur didn’t even know what they were arguing about. Eames’s behavior seemed a little out of proportion to Arthur’s behavior at this point. 

Arthur watched television until he was annoyed by everything that was playing, and then he sat up reading a book in bed. It was late when Eames finally came back downstairs, and Arthur was aware he’d been hoping that Arthur’d given up and gone to bed. Arthur tried not to be irritated by that. It wouldn’t do to start off the conversation already annoyed. 

“Why are you still awake?” Eames asked, and he didn’t sound angry, he sounded exhausted. 

Arthur put his book aside. “Because the rule is we don’t go to bed mad.” 

“Is that the rule?” called Eames from the bathroom. He had the water running. “I never knew we had that rule.” 

“We’ve always had it,” said Arthur. “We’ve never needed it before.” 

The water went off in the bathroom. Arthur waited patiently. 

After a moment Eames appeared in the doorway. He didn’t say anything. He walked over to Arthur’s side of the bed and shut off the lamp. 

“Eames,” Arthur said warningly, because the idea of going to bed still fighting made him feel slightly panicked. This wasn’t how things went with Eames. They went to bed giggling and snogging and curling into each other out of easy habit. He didn’t even know how to begin atoning for whatever it was Eames was so angry about. 

Eames walked around to his side of the bed and slid in and then pressed close to Arthur. He breathed against Arthur’s skin, and then he brushed a kiss over his shoulder. 

Arthur wasn’t sure what to do. He was pleased with the gesture of affection but he felt unsure of his footing. 

Eames said, in a low voice, “What happened?” 

Arthur didn’t have to ask him to clarify. Arthur took a deep breath and said, “I had a client who panicked. A literal panic attack, while we were under. It threw off his drug levels. I didn’t want to kick him out, not while I didn’t know what his bloodstream looked like.” 

“So what did you do?” asked Eames calmly. 

“I told him to stay put,” said Arthur. “I told him to stay right where he was and I’d get the attack I’d set up under control. I mean, I’d set it up. I was controlling it. It should have been nothing. It _was_ nothing. I turned away for two seconds to sort it and then I turned back and he was gone.” 

Eames brushed another kiss over his shoulder and said, “What did he do?” 

“Jumped off the balcony,” said Arthur. “It didn’t wake him up. The mix was wrong in his blood. He’d been taking a medication he didn’t disclose to me. It’s why it triggered the reaction it did. I tell them and tell them and _tell them_ , Eames, fuck.” Arthur pressed the hand Eames wasn’t snuggled against into his eye. 

“He’s in Limbo?” 

Arthur nodded. 

Eames said, “I’ll help you get him out. We’ll get it done. We’ve got this.” 

“You don’t have to,” Arthur started. 

“Arthur, I am more than capable of helping you with this. Which is why I’m angry. Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I don’t know,” said Arthur helplessly. “I didn’t want you to worry, I didn’t want you to…I don’t know, I walked into the apartment and you were baking cookies with Lucky and everything seemed _happy_ here, and I didn’t want to be like, ‘Oh, hey, so I almost killed someone today.’”

“First of all, _you_ didn’t do anything. And second of all, you didn’t tell me because you thought I’d know and that’s my fault and I don’t know how to fix that.”

Arthur didn’t know what to make of that. Was that what Eames had been so upset about all evening? Arthur propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Eames, who had an arm flung over his eyes so that Arthur couldn’t see them. “Wait,” said Arthur. “What? What are you talking about?” 

“I used to _know_ , Arthur. I used to just look at you and _know_. I’d know that you had a bad day, I’d know that you needed a cuddle, or a good stiff drink, or to be left alone, or to be teased, or to be fucked, or whatever, whatever it was, I used to just _know_ about you.” 

Arthur still didn’t know what to make of what Eames was saying. He said slowly, “So do you think I—”

“No, _you_ haven’t done anything. That’s what I’m saying. You’re exactly the way you always were and somewhere along the line I stopped looking at you. You were this thing that loomed so large in my imagination, I couldn’t imagine not having every part of me taken up by you, but you walked into the flat and you saw us baking, that’s what you saw, but you didn’t see that Lucky had been driving me spare because she’d got it into her head that we need to start making all of our soap from scratch, which, I have no idea which bloody idiot told her that, I am _not_ sitting around here making fucking _soap_ —”

“What?” said Arthur, utterly bewildered. 

“And I knew I was supposed to be picking out which paintings I wanted for the gallery show, but I hadn’t had time because while Lucky was at school I had to deal with the contractor about the plumbing in Lucky’s bathroom, and then when Lucky got home she was demanding and I was trying to distract her with the baking. And then you came in and she was sweet beyond belief because you’re _you_ , and you’re her knight in shining armor, you’re her protector, you’re the one she worships with every fiber of her being, and did she say anything to you about homemade soap? No, she said, ‘Arthur, look, we’re making you biscuits!’ And you said, ‘Crazy British vocabulary, we call them cookies in this household,’ and everything was like some kind of fucking fifties television show and you said, ‘I’ll finish up the baking, don’t you have that gallery show to get ready for?’ and I just _fled_.” 

Arthur blinked down at him. “Eames,” he said, bewildered. “What the _hell_ …?”

“And I’m just saying,” said Eames wearily, finally moving his arms away from his eyes, “that I forgot to even look at you when you walked through the door. I just thought, ‘Good, Arthur’s home, he’ll handle everything the way he always does,’ and I _fled_.” 

Silence fell. It was so absolute that Arthur thought he could hear traffic sounds from the sleepy city below them, could hear the settling of the old building around them, could hear Lucky’s soft breaths in the other room. 

Arthur said honestly, “I don’t even know where to start.”

Eames laughed humorlessly. 

“First, she doesn’t love me more.” 

Eames sighed. “I know she doesn’t. She just loves you _differently_. I get that. You’re you, and I get that. She and I, we quarrel and row and have struggles and she tests boundaries and gets crazy ideas in her head that she gets all stubborn and defensive over, but you walk in and you just… You just make all of the chaos make sense, and you do that, and I get that. I get why she looks at you like that. I look at you the same way. You’re our point man; we depend on you.” 

“She’s so much like you, Eames,” Arthur said. “It’s why the two of you butt heads, because she’s _so_ much like you. Sometimes I wonder if she was always going to be that way, if it was in her DNA, if she takes after some relative we’ll never meet, but other times I wonder if it was because you were the one who really raised her, while I flitted in and out. She tests boundaries and gets crazy ideas in her head because that’s what _you_ do. Fine, maybe I’m her knight in shining armor or whatever ridiculous thing you think, but you’re the one she wants to be just like. She’s painted murals on all of our walls.” 

“She wears little suits, Arthur,” Eames pointed out. 

“Yeah, but that’s just because she’s got good taste, that doesn’t mean anything,” said Arthur, and he was going for a smile and he didn’t get one at all. “Eames,” he said, soft and delicate and achingly gentle. “If she was too much, if she was driving you spare, why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you call me and say that you needed a break and—”

“Because you were busy dealing with some bloke who was having a panic attack and throwing himself into Limbo,” Eames said. 

“Right,” Arthur allowed. “Right, yes, that’s true, but I would’ve—”

“We never had a discussion about this. About any of this. This all just _happened_.” 

“What ‘this’?”

“This. Us and her and how we function together as a unit. I don’t remember ever making a conscious decision that your schedule would dictate the household and I’d fit myself into the cracks that you left me. Do you know how many times a day I say that to her? ‘We can’t go to the park now, Arthur will be home soon.’ ‘Let’s stop shouting like that, Arthur’s upstairs working.’ ‘I’m sorry I’m dragging you to the gallery, but Arthur’s working and, oh, never mind, I’ll find another time to go, stop pouting, we’ll go visit the ducks.’”

Arthur felt…sideswiped. He thought of car chases in dreams, years ago, before he’d settled into what he’d thought was a happy, comfortable family life. He thought of how sometimes something would come out of nowhere and slam into you and the loss of breath would practically knock you over, you’d have to struggle to stay upright, to keep moving forward. He felt that way now. 

“You never said anything about this,” said Arthur dazedly. 

“You never told me that you’d watched some poor bloke panic his way into Limbo.” 

“Shut up,” Arthur bit out suddenly, and sat up and turned the lamp on. “That is not nearly the same thing. I didn’t tell you about a bad day at work, you didn’t tell me that you’re _miserable_ ; those are not the same scale _at all_.” 

“I’m not miserable,” Eames said. 

“If you didn’t want this,” Arthur snapped at him, “you should have _said_. At any point in time we could’ve—”

“Stop talking,” Eames cut in furiously, and now he sat up, too. “I think this is why I didn’t say anything, because now this is a problem for you to solve, this is a plan you’re going to formulate, you’re going to pull out a Moleskine and start scribbling in it: ‘How to Make Eames Happy.’”

“Oh, you object to my having a plan to make you happy?” Arthur retorted hotly. 

“I’m not miserable. I love her and I love you. I just don’t remember making a decision that loving her and loving you also meant being this. I think the person I don’t love here is me. I think I don’t even recognize who I am. You? You’re still you. You’ve always been you. I just said it, didn’t I? You’re the point man of our family, you run the show, you tell us where to go and we do it because we’re conditioned, Lucky and I, we follow you. But I’m not me anymore. I don’t know who I am. I was this rebellious conman who never stayed in one place, and now I’m, I don’t know, I just never made a decision to—”

Their bedroom door creaked open, and Eames swallowed his words, and Arthur realized for the first time that it was possible they’d been nearly shouting at each other. Eames turned easily toward Lucky, who stood in the doorway and blinked her wide, dark eyes at them and looked uncertain. 

“Hello, poppet,” said Eames pleasantly, switching gears so smoothly. 

_Forger_ , thought Arthur, and thought how Eames hadn’t changed nearly as much as he seemed to think. 

Lucky stayed in the doorway, looking at them, silent and reproachful. 

Arthur got out of bed and walked over to her and swung her up and into his arms, gathering her against him and saying, “Eames. What is this strange creature that has been dropped in our bedroom? It’s possible it’s a baby dragon.” He dropped Lucky onto the bed next to Eames. 

She giggled and said, “No!”

“No, the creature is quite right,” said Eames. “This is not a baby dragon. Don’t you know what a baby dragon looks like? This is clearly a unicorn.” 

“Oh, a unicorn,” said Arthur, shutting off the lamp and getting back into bed. “Of course. Silly me.” 

“Easy mistake,” said Eames. “Unicorns are very rare creatures—”

Lucky, still giggling, said, “I’m not a unicorn, Eames!” 

“No?” said Eames. “You’re not a unicorn? The creature says it is not a unicorn, Arthur.” 

“Well, I do not understand,” said Arthur. “What could this creature possibly be?” 

“I’m a Lucky,” said Lucky, and roared threateningly in Arthur’s face, grinning with delight. 

“A Lucky?” said Eames. “But that’s impossible. Luckies have not been seen here for a thousand years.” 

“You know,” said Arthur gravely, “there is only one foolproof way to be sure if something is a Lucky.” 

“I know this test,” said Eames. “It involves _tickling_.” 

Lucky gasped and giggled and squirmed away from Eames’s attack. 

Eames sat back and said, “I’m satisfied. She’s a Lucky.” 

“Good,” said Arthur. “So we won’t be killed while we sleep by a baby dragon?” 

“Baby dragons are nice,” Lucky informed him, snuggling down between him and Eames. “They only grow up to be mean because of peer pressure.” 

“Valid point,” said Eames. “Peer pressure’s a bitch.” 

“That’s not a nice word,” said Lucky sleepily. “Tomorrow you owe me a dollar.” 

“Yes, sweetheart,” said Eames, smoothing a hand fondly over her hair. 

Arthur watched them and wondered at everything Eames had said, and how little sense it had made to him, because Arthur looked at them and saw…his _life_. His _entire life_ , in the way Eames looked at Lucky and the way Lucky looked back at him. 

And maybe that was what Eames had meant, because maybe, once upon a time, it had been Arthur that Eames had looked at that way, and life went on and got busier and you fell in love with a child and you made her more important than either of you and that was the right thing to do. But maybe it was also Eames’s point that they hadn’t had a discussion about that, it had just _happened_ , and maybe, when you thought about it that way, it was terrifying how life snuck up on you. 

“You’ll stay here with me, though?” said Lucky. “Just in case a big dragon comes. Or a real unicorn. I think they’re mean.” 

“I’ve heard that about unicorns, too,” said Eames, and kissed her head. “Yes, we’ll stay.” 

Lucky twisted to look at Arthur. “You, too?” 

Arthur had the sudden flash of realization that Lucky, hearing them arguing, was worried one of them was about to leave. Where had she gotten that fear from? Arthur couldn’t imagine. But he just said, “Of course. Both of us. Go to sleep, _ma petite_ ,” and kissed her forehead. 

“ _Je t’aimerai toujours quoi qu’il arrive_ ,” she slurred out at him as her eyes dropped closed. 

“Yeah,” he said, and said it back to her and stroked his hand over her hair and tried to get himself to settle. Her breaths were deep and even and she seemed so peaceful, as if they had not woken her up by shouting at each other over things Arthur couldn’t even comprehend. 

“Darling,” ventured Eames softly. 

Arthur hadn’t been sure Eames was still awake. He closed his eyes and said, “That’s the first time you’ve called me ‘darling’ all day.” 

There was a moment of silence.

“I adore you,” said Eames. “I wouldn’t change a single minute of any of this. I really wouldn’t. I don’t know why I—”

“Never mind,” said Arthur. “I love you, too. We’ll figure it out, right?” 

“Right,” said Eames. “Right. Of course.” 

Arthur stroked his hand over Lucky’s hair and looked up at the moonlight on the ceiling and thought how much he hated when he could tell Eames was lying.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

When Lucky was three, Eames lost her. 

Not permanently. When all was said and done, he lost her for maybe five minutes, total. And Lucky never even knew she was lost. But Eames knew. 

He had taken her down by the water. He liked it there. The ocean that brushed up against Portugal seemed more adventurous somehow than any other ocean. Eames liked to sit in view of the waves, with Lucky on his lap, and tell her swashbuckling stories about dream crime that he couched in fairy-tale vernacular. (In those stories, Arthur was always the knight in shining armor; Eames always cast himself as a clever jester.)

There were more tourists down by the water, a dizzying array of languages on display, and Eames liked that, too. It reminded him of his previous life, which he didn’t actually miss, but which he did sometimes like to remember had belonged to him. 

So it wasn’t like it was the first time Eames had been to the water with Lucky, and he should have been prepared for the hustle and bustle, and afterward he never could recall exactly how he lost her. Eames was a con artist who was adept at sleight of hand, knew the importance of precision in every movement, and yet the moments before he realized Lucky wasn’t where he’d thought she’d be were eternally fuzzy for him, could not be pinpointed.

He’d been carrying Lucky—prams were a bitch on Lisbon’s streets, and anyway Lucky petulantly complained about wanting to walk—and he’d put her down to dig out some cash so he could buy them both an ice cream. It was a warm day, and the ice cream had looked thoroughly alluring. 

He put Lucky down right next to him. He handed across cash and got ice cream in exchange. He turned to hand Lucky hers…and she wasn’t there. 

“Lucky?” Eames said, and looked all around him, and the crowd seemed _enormous_ , and none of them were a tiny dark-haired girl, oh, God, Lucky was _tiny_ , how was he ever going to—“Lucky,” he said again, trying to push down his rising panic. “ _Lucky_.” 

No one was responding to him. No one was even _looking_ at him. How were people not looking at him? How were people not _helping_ him? How were people not realizing the severity of what was happening? 

Oh, Christ, had she been taken? Had someone from their old life caught up with them and stolen their child? And how had Eames not been paying attention, and Arthur was going to kill him right after he killed whoever had taken her, and—

“Eames!” exclaimed Lucky, suddenly barreling into him out of nowhere. “ _Eames_! _Balloons_!” 

She gestured at a bunch of balloons across the park from where they were standing. Lucky adored balloons. Lucky had clearly gone in search of balloons and then, thankfully, thought to come back and tell Eames about it first. 

Eames dropped their ice creams to the ground. 

Lucky wrinkled her nose and looked about to protest, but Eames picked her up and hugged her so tightly that it cut off whatever she was going to say. 

He said into her neck, “Lucky. You mustn’t ever wander off again. You terrified me.” 

“Balloons,” said Lucky, sounding bewildered that he hadn’t grasped that immediately as being what had distracted her. 

And maybe he would have realized it if he hadn’t been uselessly panicking. “You have to tell me,” Eames said. “Before you walk away. It’s very important.” 

“It’s a rule?” asked Lucky, because that was a word she understood, it was a word ingrained in her from Arthur. They actually didn’t have many rules, but the ones they had—like _don’t talk to strangers_ —were sacred. 

“It’s a rule,” Eames confirmed, and Lucky nodded happily, having absorbed that. 

Then she said carefully, “Go see balloons, Eames?” 

He bought her the entire bunch of balloons. Lucky was in _raptures_. Eames might as well have found a way to climb into the sky and buy her the moon. When Arthur came home, the flat was full of them, all of them bouncing along the ceiling. He had to wade through a mini-forest of dragging ribbons to find the two of them. 

Lucky said, “ _Arthur. All the balloons. All the balloons in the world_.” 

“I can see that,” said Arthur wryly, kissing Lucky’s head. “Are we celebrating?” 

“ _Balloons_ ,” Lucky reiterated, apparently not thinking Arthur had provided her with the proper response. 

“Celebration enough.” He gave Eames a quick casual kiss, more of a grin against Eames’s lips than a kiss. “Is it your birthday? Have I forgotten your birthday?” 

_I lost our child today_ , thought Eames. _I bought her all the balloons to make up for it_. 

Arthur’s eyes were bright and unclouded. He knew when Eames’s birthday was. He knew it wasn’t that day. He thought Eames was being playful and silly. He turned and lifted Lucky up and let her bat some balloons around, and they giggled together, and Eames sat on the sofa feeling slightly sick. This was his family, the most important people in his world, and he’d almost fucked it all up. 

He was quiet through dinner, and he was quiet through bathtime, and he was quiet through bedtime. Lucky talked enough for him—she always did—but Arthur noticed because he kept sending quizzical looks Eames’s way. Normally they teamed up for the bedtime story, Arthur doing the straight-man commentary while Eames acted out the parts, but Arthur seemed to sense Eames wasn’t up to it and did his best to do silly voices. Eames sat and stared at the wonder of Lucky, hanging on Arthur’s every word. Arthur who had pulled her out of a pile of garbage and saved her life and kept saving her life and had smuggled this most precious creature to safety just to get her here where Eames had _lost_ her. 

“You okay?” Arthur asked seriously, when Lucky was sleeping and they were getting ready for bed. 

Eames nodded and climbed into bed. 

Arthur lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t think you’ve said two words all night, and that is the opposite of you, so why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?” 

Eames looked across at him, half in the process of undressing, Arthur as only Eames ever saw him. 

Eames said hoarsely, “I’m not going to fuck this up.” 

Arthur tipped his head, looking confused. “What?” 

“This. Lucky. I…I am going to be…so good…to Lucky.” 

Arthur still looked bewildered. “I never thought you wouldn’t be. Where’s this coming from?” 

_I don’t want you to regret choosing me_ , Eames wanted to say. _All the people in the world, I don’t want you to regret choosing a drifter conman to raise this incredible child with_. “I just love you a lot,” Eames said instead. “Love her a lot. Really want this life.” 

Arthur narrowed his eyes. “Did you get a job offer today?” 

It made sense, Eames thought. Of course Arthur would think that. Arthur would think that before he would think that Eames had lost Lucky. 

Eames didn’t confirm or deny it. He let Arthur think what Arthur wanted to think. He just said, “I don’t want a job offer. I just want this, here, with you. I’m going to make all of this work.” 

Arthur gave up on getting undressed and got into bed with him. Arthur said, “Yeah. Me, too.” 

And that was that. 

***

Arthur, at some point in the turmoil caused by Eames’s words the night before, managed to sleep, and woke in the morning to Lucky, sound asleep and clinging to him tightly, and Eames nowhere to be found. Arthur could count on one hand the number of times Eames had woken before him in their time together. In their marriage, he supposed. There was a wedding license. Albeit a forged one. But it was there. They had both been unsentimental and pragmatic about it, knowing it made sense for Lucky’s sake, but Arthur never really stopped to think of them as married, never really referred to Eames as his husband. He just called him Eames, always, even when he referred to him in conversation, as if he didn’t need to be further defined. Arthur had thought that was a _good_ thing, his resistance to labels. Eames had always seemed to him to be someone who disliked labels. Now Arthur was wondering if he’d been wrong about that. 

If he’d been wrong about _everything_. 

It was early still. It wasn’t as if Arthur had accidentally overslept. Lucky slept the heavy, committed sleep Arthur wasn’t sure he’d ever slept, drooling onto Arthur’s T-shirt, blankets tangled around her legs. Arthur brushed his hand over her hair and watched the sun rising through the bedroom window. He could hear Eames moving around in the apartment, so at least Eames hadn’t totally disappeared. He should get up and talk to him and stop being a coward. They were never going to get through this by sweeping it under the rug. Sweeping it under the rug was what had caused the issue in the first place. Just going along, as if nothing was wrong, which was what Arthur had so stupidly thought. 

Arthur slid out from underneath Lucky, who barely noticed. She snuffled and turned into his pillow and tangled the blanket around her legs more. 

Eames was in the kitchen reading the newspaper, as if reading the newspaper was a thing he did. They got the newspaper for Arthur. Eames’s reading choices ran toward magazines and novels. Arthur didn’t think he’d ever seen him read the newspaper before. 

Eames glanced up at him when he walked in and said mildly, “Good morning. Not going running today?” 

As if today was going to be like every other morning in their household. 

Arthur sat at the table and glanced at the coffeepot, already brewed coffee sitting in it. “How long have you been awake?” 

Eames shrugged and sipped from his mug of coffee and turned a page of the newspaper. 

Arthur watched him closely. “Did you sleep at all?” 

“Arthur,” Eames said, and folded the newspaper. “Would you do something for me?” 

“I would do anything for you,” Arthur responded evenly. “And the fact that you feel you have to ask me that alarms me.” 

“Let’s not do this right now,” said Eames. “I don’t want to do this right now.” 

Arthur stood and poured himself a cup of coffee. Then he leaned against the counter and sipped from it. Then he said, “I’ll make a deal with you.” 

Eames gave him a sardonic look. “Oh, lovely. A negotiation. Just how I like to start my morning.” 

“I’ll drop everything, go through this charade of normality with you, until my client is out of Limbo. And until we’re alone, without Lucky around. And then we need to talk about this.” 

“There really isn’t anything to talk about, Arthur.” 

“I don’t know why you think you’ve changed so much,” said Arthur tightly. “When you’re sitting there forging right in front of me. When you’ve been forging for who knows how long.” 

Eames gave Arthur one of his inscrutable looks. Arthur had thought it had been a while since he’d seen one of those looks but who knew anymore. Then Eames stood and leaned past Arthur to put his mug in the sink. “Fine,” he said heavily, resigned. “Have it your way. I’m going to take a shower.”

Arthur let him leave the kitchen without dragging him back in and kissing him, or doing something to show that he wasn’t angry, he was just bewildered and hurt and desperate to make it better. He didn’t know how to ease this odd tension. He couldn’t remember the last time things had been this tense between him and Eames. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? This had been building for a long time, apparently, and Arthur _had never noticed_. 

Arthur wasn’t used to feeling wrong-footed like this. Eames had always had the ability to throw him off. Eames had always _tried_ to throw him off. But Eames had never tried _not_ to throw him off, which was apparently what Arthur had allowed him to do all this time. And Arthur hated everything about this, hated flailing like this, hated fighting with Eames. A part of him just wanted to let Eames sweep it under the rug. Maybe if he joined him in the shower he could tease him and make him smile and Eames would call him _darling_ and Arthur could pretend he’d imagined all of this. Or it was a terrible dream. 

The dream thought made Arthur think of his totem, which he’d left in the bedroom because he’d been disconcerted this morning. He went in search of it, just to make sure this really was reality, and realized that the shower wasn’t running. Was Eames already done? 

And then he heard the low rumble of Eames’s voice, and then an answering giggle from Lucky. Arthur crept up to the door, as Lucky said, “But ducks don’t paint!” 

“That duck painted,” Eames said knowledgeably. “He held out his wing and brushed it into the paint and then on the canvas, he absolutely did.”

“You’re making this up,” said Lucky, laughing hysterically like Eames was the most hilarious person she’d ever encountered. 

Arthur leaned his head against the wall and listened and smiled and ached with love and marveled at how he could have fucked this whole thing up so horribly. 

“I am not,” Eames assured her. “When asked about his paintings, the duck said, ‘Moo, moo, moo.’”

“That’s a cow!” Lucky informed him gleefully. 

“No,” said Eames thoughtfully. “I’m fairly certain it was a duck.” 

“Cows moo! Ducks quack!” 

“Maybe it was a multilingual duck,” suggested Eames. 

“You are _ridiculous_ ,” said Lucky wisely. 

And Eames said, sounding fond, “You sound like Arthur.” 

Arthur bit his lip to keep from laughing. Because, yes, _ridiculous_ was probably a word Lucky had learned from him. 

“Are you angry with Arthur?” Lucky asked seriously, which wiped the smile off of Arthur’s face. “’Cuz I’m not angry with Arthur,” Lucky explained. 

“No,” Eames said, after a moment during which Arthur held his breath. “I am not angry with Arthur.” 

“Is Arthur angry with you?” 

“I don’t think so.” 

“You were yelling at each other. That’s what people do when they’re angry with each other.” 

“We weren’t yelling at each other. We were conversing more loudly than we’d intended.” There was a moment of silence. Lucky must have looked skeptical, because Eames kept talking. “We’re not angry with each other.” 

There was another moment of silence. Finally Lucky said, “Maybe you should say sorry anyway. Just in case.” 

“Maybe I will,” agreed Eames. “Listen, nobody’s going to leave. Is this about Jorge’s dad leaving?” 

_Jorge’s dad_ , thought Arthur. Arthur had only the most basic idea who Jorge was. One of Lucky’s friends from school. He hadn’t known about any distress in Jorge’s life. Eames was the one who knew. Eames was the one who kept track. Eames was right: Arthur had pointed him in a direction, given him this job, and then let him do it, and he had never even checked in to make sure that was okay. And Eames had let him. But you couldn’t run your life like it was a mission. Why had Arthur even _tried_? 

“No,” Lucky said. 

“Okay,” said Eames, in his _I’m-not-convinced-but-I’ll-let-you-lie_ voice. “No one’s leaving here. We’re a family.” 

“We’re a team,” said Lucky. 

He and Eames said that to her, all the time. Arthur had thought it cute. Now it pained him that she thought of them like that. And it pained him that Eames just wanted to think of them as a family. 

“A team,” Eames echoed. 

“The _best_ team,” said Lucky. “Googolplex team,” which was her all-purpose adjective for incredibleness.

“Yeah,” agreed Eames, although he sounded hollow. “The best. What’s that fancy French phrase you and Arthur say?” 

Eames knew the phrase. Eames knew French. But Arthur listened to Lucky happily say, “ _Je t’aimerai toujours quoi qu’il arrive._ ” 

Eames said, “Yes. That,” and then Lucky started giggling madly. 

Arthur took advantage of what was obviously a tickle attack to make his entrance. Eames and Lucky looked up at him, both of their heads crowned with tousled hair, two bright sets of eyes looking at him, two grinning mouths. 

“What’s happening in here?” he asked, and he was smiling because he couldn’t help it, despite everything. 

“Arthur!” exclaimed Lucky, and wriggled off the bed and ran to Arthur. 

“Oof,” said Arthur dramatically when Lucky collided with him. 

“Save me!” Lucky commanded him. 

And Arthur thought of Eames, saying that Lucky thought of him as her knight in shining armor, and felt guilty suddenly. He glanced up at Eames. 

Eames was rolling himself off of the bed, so Arthur couldn’t really see his face. When he straightened and walked over to where Arthur was standing with Lucky clinging to his leg, he looked affable, not the least bit upset. 

But Arthur wouldn’t know if he was upset. Arthur hadn’t known. 

Eames said, “Now is the time for all Eameses to take showers.” 

“And all Luckies to get ready for school,” finished Arthur, catching his prompt. 

“Truce,” Lucky said to Eames, solemnly extending her hand. 

“Truce,” Eames agreed, equally solemn, and then swept her up without warning and tipped her briefly upside down. 

Lucky squealed with delight. 

Eames said fondly, “Silly poppet,” and righted her and kissed the top of her head. 

He winked at Arthur but he didn’t kiss him, and Arthur felt the absence of that like a frigid blast of air.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

“I’ll take Lucky to school,” Arthur offered. When he was fully dressed and ready to go, Lucky and Eames were finishing up breakfast in the kitchen.

“You don’t have to,” Eames replied lightly, standing to clear the plates.

“Eames,” Arthur said. “Let me.”

Eames glanced across at him and then nodded. 

That settled, Arthur looked at Lucky. “What about you, _ma petite_? Ready?” 

“I need my tie,” Lucky announced, and ran out of the kitchen. 

“Where shall I meet you?” Eames asked, wiping his hands on the dishtowel. 

“I can text you the address,” said Arthur. 

“Excellent. Meet in an hour or so?” 

“Yeah. What will you do until then?” 

“Paint, I think,” said Eames, and he looked pleased at the prospect, which made Arthur feel a little hopeful that offering to take Lucky had been the right move.

Lucky came back with a striped purple tie that she presented to Eames. For a second Arthur was surprised—he was the one that wore ties; Eames never did—and then he remembered that Eames was the one who got Lucky ready for school in the morning. This was clearly part of their routine. 

Eames knotted her tie around her neck. Then he gave her a hug and a kiss and said, “Have a fabulous day at school, sweetheart,” and then Lucky skipped over to Arthur and took his hand and practically dragged him out of the house. 

They walked to school up and down the Lisbon hills, and Lucky never stopped talking, narrating their journey. Normally Eames took her to school. Normally Arthur was already working by this time. So Lucky told him all about the things she and Eames noticed every day: the stray cats here, the open windows over there, _Senhora_ Lima who waved to them every morning. 

Arthur didn’t do this, he thought. He didn’t know about these things. Arthur had divided up their family life like he was running an extraction, and he’d _thought he’d been doing a good job_ , but he’d been _missing all of this_ , and if he hadn’t snapped at Lucky the previous day and if Eames hadn’t noticed then how long would they have gone on like this? 

They reached Lucky’s school and she introduced him to every single person they came in contact with: her fellow classmates, their parents, and the culminating person of the teacher, who Lucky introduced him to with reverence. Arthur realized with a start that the reverence wasn’t just for the teacher (Arthur had been a child who treated his teachers with reverence; he supposed he had expected such a reaction out of his own child, even if not biological). Lucky was _showing him off_. Lucky was proud of him, delighted to have him with her, so pleased he’d taken time out of his schedule to _walk her to school_. 

“This is my other dad, Arthur,” Lucky was saying to her teacher, which was silly, Arthur had met her, he went to open house nights and back-to-school nights and parent-teacher conferences, he had always, up to this point, considered himself an involved parent. “Arthur’s usually at work when I come to school, but he took me today.” Lucky beamed. 

“How lovely,” said the teacher, her English British-accented. It was an international school modeled after the British system but with an emphasis on teaching Portuguese as well. Arthur and Eames had chosen it so carefully, trying to give Lucky as varied an education as her background was. Eames had surprised Arthur by being enchanted by the ability to give Lucky the sort of public school education he’d had (“You liked that?” Arthur had said, because Eames had never mentioned it, and Eames had looked at him like he was daft and said, “ _Darling_ , it was _incredible_ , we got in all manner of scrapes,” and Arthur had said, “So you want Lucky to have that experience?” and Eames had said, “ _Yes_ , it’s very important for children to get into scrapes, it’s how she’ll learn what she likes, and they’ll be mainly _supervised_ scrapes, so it’s even better, and it isn’t like she’s _living_ there”) and Arthur had liked the school’s commitment to teaching the children Portuguese and not ignoring the fact that they were in Lisbon and so he’d agreed, and so far he thought he was very happy with how things were going, certainly Lucky seemed to love it. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? _He didn’t actually know._ He’d chosen the school carefully, sent Lucky off to it, and then assumed Eames would tell him if anything else happened he needed to know about. 

Lucky’s teacher smiled at him and then moved on. 

Lucky turned to him, saying, “Okay, you can go now, it’s time for—”

Arthur startled her by dropping to his knees and pulling her into a fierce hug. 

“Arthur?” she said hesitantly. 

“I’m so sorry,” Arthur said, nose pressed into her hair. 

He felt Lucky freeze up. “Are you leaving?” 

And then he cursed himself, remembering her conversation with Eames that morning. “No.” He nudged Lucky back enough so he could see her. “Never. Never, ever. I’m sorry I don’t take you to school. I’m sorry I’m not around as much as I could be. I’m going to be around more, okay? I am going to be…the _best_. I promised you I would be.” 

Lucky looked bewildered. “You are the best. _We’re_ the best.” 

“We absolutely are,” Arthur agreed, and tugged her back in and kissed her head and murmured, “ _Je t’aimerai toujours quoi qu’il arrive_.” 

“ _Je t’aimerai toujours quoi qu’il arrive_ ,” she replied happily, and then she gave him an enthusiastic kiss on his cheek and raced off to play. 

***

Eames spent his morning painting. This was a luxury he didn’t get as often these days as he used to. He didn’t know why, because Lucky went to school now, so theoretically Eames should have more time to himself, but it hadn’t seemed to work out that way.

So Eames, conscious of the very real luxury Arthur had arranged for him, stood in front of a blank canvas. 

And thought of how Arthur had arranged this luxury because Arthur felt guilty. Which seemed unfair because Eames kind of wanted to corner the market on guilt. Why hadn’t he just shut up? Why hadn’t he just said, _Darling, tell me what’s wrong_ , instead of making it all about him and his feeling horrible for having missed it? Arthur was a terrible perfectionist, he was going to beat himself up over this whole thing when it wasn’t necessary, Eames was _very happy_. 

“Fuck it,” Eames said, and dumped black paint onto his canvas. 

When Arthur texted with the address of his client in Limbo, Eames had been unsuccessful in getting himself out of his unproductive headspace. He sighed and washed himself up and actually paused in front of his wardrobe and thought about what to wear. He tried to remember the last time he’d thought about what to wear. He had fallen into a habit of just pulling out whatever was nearest and clean enough to do. Arthur still dressed daily like he was getting ready for a fashion shoot. Arthur had never let his standards fall. Arthur had just stayed so _Arthurian_ through all of this. Eames wondered if it was the forger in him that made him so changeable. 

At any rate, he stood in front of the wardrobe and forced himself to actually think about this, and then he selected a pair of burnt orange trousers and a shirt with a dramatic brown geometric print that had been a gift from Arthur years ago. And then he actually combed his hair back and gelled it into place, another habit he’d fallen out of. 

He regarded his reflection critically and thought mainly he just looked _older_. Maybe he was having a midlife crisis. 

“Here we go,” he told himself, and flipped his poker chip on his way out the door. 

Arthur’s address turned out to be a posh private hospital. Because of course it did. Arthur would naturally take care of his clients. 

Arthur arched one eyebrow when Eames walked in and Eames thought suddenly that he’d missed that little quirk of disapproval. How was it that he even missed _that_? 

Arthur was readying the PASIV, being brisk and efficient in his movements, and Eames watched him. He was talking, something about the plan for Limbo, and Eames had a sudden moment of panic. It had been a while since he had done this. Maybe this was a horrible idea. Maybe he was going to be no help at all. 

Arthur was saying something about the timer, something about how quickly they were going in and out, because he didn’t want them to get stuck there, and he was fairly sure it was safe, and—

Arthur was tense, Eames thought. Arthur was so on edge that he was vibrating with it.

“Darling,” Eames said. 

And Arthur closed his eyes and shuddered and said, “Thank Christ,” and suddenly was on Eames, face pressed into his neck. 

For a moment Eames was surprised, and then wondered why he was. Of _course_ Arthur had been desperate for an endearment from Eames. Eames hadn’t even realized he was withholding them until that moment. “I’m sorry,” he said, and pressed kisses over Arthur’s head. “I’m sorry, darling.” 

“Don’t apologize,” Arthur said into his neck. “I just didn’t want to go into Limbo like that, but I didn’t want to be selfish and ask you to—”

“Darling,” said Eames. “ _Darling_.” He lifted Arthur’s head gently so he could look him in the eye. “Light of my life,” he said meaningfully, and cupped his hands around Arthur’s face. 

Arthur’s eyes were wide and dark and solemn. He said, “I love you. I don’t know when I stopped saying that to you, but I love you.” 

“I know,” Eames said, because he did. “I love you, too.” 

Arthur nodded, a jerky little movement, and then he surged forward and pressed a quick, fervent kiss to Eames’s lips. “Let’s go save someone from Limbo. And then we’ll talk.” 

Eames nodded. 

***

In the end it was easier than Arthur had expected. Possibly that was just because he had Eames in the dreamspace with him. He’d forgotten what it was like to have the solid, dependable presence of Eames with him in what could otherwise be the complete and utter chaos of a dream. But Eames was so fluidly at-home in dreamspace, moved through it with such command, that Arthur found himself relaxing, remembering what it had been like in those days when they had still been in dreamsharing actively together, when having Eames on a team meant that sometimes Arthur didn’t have to carry the entire burden himself. 

The client was grateful to be saved, and Eames went and waited outside while Arthur gave him a stern talking-to about honesty in the chemicals. The client was so terrified that Arthur didn’t think he would ever fuck that up again. 

Then Arthur packed up his PASIV and walked out to where Eames was waiting for him. 

“Home?” Eames suggested. 

Arthur nodded, and they set off together. “Lucky gave me the Grand Tour of Lisbon this morning.” 

Eames chuckled. “Lucky thinks she’s the mayor.”

“Lucky might not be wrong,” replied Arthur. 

“Please don’t encourage her to go into politics. I want her to go into something respectable, like art forgery.” 

“Corporate espionage.” 

“Elaborate heists.” 

“Cunning strategist.” 

“Oh, fuck,” Eames said, “she’s totally going to be a politician.” 

Arthur laughed. 

Eames said, “How’s your client?” 

“He’s okay. He will never make that mistake again.” 

“Really? You think he’ll learn from his mistake? I always forget how much of an optimist you are.” 

Arthur considered this. “Am I?” 

Eames snorted. 

Arthur looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but his expression was inscrutable. “You think he’ll make the same mistake again?” 

“I think he won’t intend to. But I think most of us do.” 

Arthur thought of what to say in response to that. He settled for saying lightly, “Were you always such a pessimist? Or did I cause that?” 

“I’m a realist, Arthur,” said Eames, sounding tired. “And no, I’ve always been that way. Which of us was the one saying it was madness to try to keep a baby in the middle of the rainy season in a country where everybody seemed to want us dead?” 

“But you were the one who ultimately convinced me to keep her, in the end,” Arthur pointed out. 

“Oh, petal, you were never going to give her up. _That_ was your optimism, thinking you’d be able to walk away from her. I was the realist there, too.” 

Arthur was silent for a moment, watching the uneven stones of the hill they were ascending. Then he said, “You loved me. And I came with a baby. So you took the baby, too.” 

Eames stopped walking, forcing Arthur to stop and face him. “I loved her, too,” he said harshly. “That wasn’t just a You thing. Don’t make that into a You thing. I loved her, too. I was the realist who knew before you did how deep we were in with her. I didn’t resign myself to a life with Lucky. If that’s how much of a martyr you’re making yourself in your head, woe is Arthur, so wrapped up in duty that he tragically forced me to be a father to a _miracle_ , well, fuck you.” 

“I didn’t—” Arthur started, frustrated, but Eames had already started walking again. Arthur caught up to him and said, “Hey. I know you love her.” 

“How kind of you, Arthur, to realize I love our daughter.” 

Arthur took a deep breath. Eames was devastatingly sarcastic when he argued, and Arthur didn’t mind it when they were fighting about stupid things, but he hated it right now. “I am trying here,” Arthur snapped. “I am trying to have a conversation with you because you are important to me, and I love you, and I want you to be happy, and I can’t fucking do any of that if you won’t talk to me.” 

“Arthur, I’m happy,” Eames said. 

“You know, you’re so used to forging that you’ve forgotten you can’t lie to me.” 

“Can’t I?” Eames retorted. “Because if I’m not happy, then I’ve been pretty successfully lying about it for a bloody long time, haven’t I?” 

Which gave Arthur enough pause that he actually stopped walking. Eames didn’t stop. Eames kept going. 

And Arthur followed at a distance, walking slowly all the way to their house, all the way up the stairs to their apartment. And when they got there he said to Eames flatly, “Sit down.” 

Eames’s eyebrows flickered upward but he sat, apparently resigned. But when Arthur opened the PASIV, he said in surprise, “What are you—”

“Your head or mine?” Arthur asked evenly. 

“What?” 

“Whose head do you want? Yours or mine?” 

Eames hesitated. Then he said, “Yours. But why are we—”

“Because, Eames.” Arthur inserted his needle for him. “Because this is who we are. You’re right. Somewhere along the way we forgot who we are. When did we stop doing this? Five fucking minutes and we could—” Arthur cut himself off. Arthur looked at Eames, who looked a little shocked in the best possible way. “Go to sleep, Mr. Eames,” Arthur said. 

***

Arthur’s head was as organized as it always was. At the moment it was a hilltop fortress town, medieval in character, and Eames tried not to read too much into the fact that Arthur’s head was literally preparing for a war. 

It was a market town, and the narrow medieval streets were crowded with projections, all of whom paused to look at Eames and wave hello. 

Eames said, “Stop them doing that,” disconcerted by how friendly Arthur’s projections were. 

“I can’t,” Arthur said. “They’re happy to see you. That’s how my head is.” 

“Arthur—” Eames began after a moment. 

“I asked you whose head you wanted,” Arthur replied shortly. 

Which was true, so Eames fell silent. He followed Arthur, who was walking steadily upward, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, which was so dressed-down for him that Eames wasn’t sure what to make of it. It was Arthur’s head, Eames reminded himself, and let him lead. They went up and up the narrow, winding streets, until they reached a tower, and then Arthur led them inside there, up a narrow, winding staircase. Finally Eames, having had enough, grabbed Arthur’s hand. 

Arthur looked back at him. 

Eames said, “Hold on,” and then dreamed the staircase into motion, an escalator right there in the medieval tower. 

Arthur grinned at him. 

“Don’t you get enough of climbing up hills in Lisbon?” asked Eames. 

“I don’t do it as much as you,” Arthur said. “Which we’re going to talk about.” 

_Joy_ , thought Eames, but didn’t say, because now they’d reached the top, and Arthur stepped out. 

Eames followed him, onto a vast terrace. Plants and impossible trees were scattered along it in extravagant bloom. There was a table set with flickering candles and a bottle of wine and several platters of food. There were blankets laid out on the grass. There was the sound of water trickling somewhere, and the scent of jasmine heavy in the air. 

Eames said, “Are you trying to seduce me?” 

Arthur said, “Yes. Very consciously. Pulling out all the stops. Are you hungry?” 

“No,” Eames said, because he wasn’t. 

“Come see this,” Arthur said, and led him to a curving seat built directly into the wall of the tower, looking out over the whole of the town and the rolling countryside beyond it. Arthur hadn’t populated the countryside, so it looked empty, but lovely, like a background painting. 

“Do you come here a lot?” Eames asked, as they settled into the seat together. 

“No,” Arthur said. “I don’t dream on my own anymore, and I would never take my clients here.” 

Eames went about filling in Arthur’s countryside, adding farmhouses in the distance, tiny white flecks of sheep. He could feel Arthur watching him.

Finally Arthur said, “Why don’t we do this anymore?” 

“We never really did this,” Eames said.

“You feel like you lost sight of yourself, and you probably did, because this used to be your life, and then you just _stopped_. I shouldn’t have let you just stop. You love dreaming.” 

Eames painted the sky into twilight, scattered shooting stars over it. Then he admitted, “I didn’t realize I missed it this much.” 

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize how lost you were feeling,” Arthur said, “I’m sorry I…gave you a job and then expected you to do it. I’m sorry I ran our life like it was an extraction. I’m sorry I call us a team instead of a family.” 

Eames set a moon in the sky, painted it pink and then purple and then a pulsing green. He said, “That’s a lot that you’re sorry for.” 

“Yeah,” Arthur agreed. 

Eames took a deep breath and looked at Arthur. “It isn’t all your fault.” 

“I know I didn’t—”

“When Lucky was three, I lost her.” 

Arthur tipped his head, looking confused. “What?” 

“I took her to the park and she saw balloons and she ran off and I couldn’t find her.” 

Arthur blinked at him. “How long was she missing?” 

“Maybe a minute. Tops.” 

Arthur looked visibly relieved. “Eames. A minute? That’s—”

“Don’t tell me it’s nothing. I was terrified. I thought I had lost her for us forever. I bought her every damn balloon in the park to make up for it. Do you remember that?” 

Arthur shook his head faintly. “No. Should I have…?”

“I couldn’t do this life halfway, Arthur. Lucky needed—Lucky _deserved_ —the best. I was determined to give her that. So yeah, you gave me this job, but I didn’t push back. I was determined to do the best bloody job I could do for the two of you.” 

“Yeah,” Arthur said. “And I should have known that. Because you always did that on a team.” 

“ _We are not a team_ ,” Eames bit out at him. 

Arthur grimaced and then buried his face in his hands. “I know. I’m sorry. Fuck.” 

Eames sighed and brushed aside the blazing sun his anger had brought out into the sky, replaced it with his more soothing moon. Then he said, “Sorry.” 

“No, you’re right to be angry at me for—”

“It’s who you are—”

“Right. And I didn’t change. You tied yourself up into knots changing for me, and I just _let_ you.” 

After a second Eames said, “I didn’t want you to… I didn’t want you to regret…” 

“I regret a lot of things, Eames. I regret that I didn’t notice this before, I regret that I shoved so much of Lucky onto you, I regret that—”

“You’re an excellent father. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re a fantastic father and she’s, well, lucky to have you. I knew you would do this. I knew if I said anything that you would… But I didn’t want you to regret choosing _me_. You could have given the gift of you and of her to anyone, and I didn’t want you to regret choosing me.” 

There was a long moment. Eames held his breath and looked down at the town, dizzyingly small below them. Were they getting higher? 

“Eames,” Arthur said softly. “How could I ever regret that? As if you were a _choice_ in my head, a pro/con list I made. As if I didn’t love you desperately. As if I don’t—”

“What would you have done if I’d lost her?” 

“You didn’t—”

“You would have kicked yourself for entrusting her to a no-good, untrustworthy conman. And you would have been right.” 

“Eames,” Arthur said, and then with the fluidity of dream movement he was on Eames’s lap, straddling him, looking down at him in concerned wonder. “ _Eames_. How could you think for even a moment that there was anyone in the world I’d ever want to raise her with other than you? If you’d lost her, would I have been angry? Yes. But would I ever have thought that you did anything else than love her to distraction? No.” 

“Arthur, you already doubt my love for her just on the basis of my admitting I’m not thrilled to death with how our life has shaken out.” 

“No.” Arthur shook his head. “I have never doubted your love for _her_.” Arthur paused. “My doubt is about your love for _me_. Because you’re right, I haven’t been fair to you, I haven’t… I know you love her. That’s what makes you the man I love. I’m sorry. I let you do all the work. Not with her, with _us_. I told you—I told you to just trust that I would always love you, that I would always trust you, that I would never doubt you, and you’re so _good_ at that, Eames. You’re so good at just… _being there_ , whenever I need you to be. I know we’re not a team, but that’s how you always were, I have always depended on that, I have always depended on _you_ , and I just kept doing it, and I’m _sorry_. I should have made you realize every single day that I love you so much I can’t…I can’t… Why have I been so terrible at… I _love_ you. I _adore_ you. I was in love with you from the moment I met you, and I was _so terrible_ at telling you, I didn’t tell you until I’d almost lost you and even then I was awful at it, I’m just so… And I don’t want to be. I want to be so much better than that for you. I’m so sorry I haven’t been, and don’t tell me that I didn’t do anything wrong or it’s not my fault or whatever you’re about to tell me. Please just tell me—tell me what you need from me to make you happy because I don’t…I can’t…” Arthur trailed off and looked at him desperately. 

Eames wanted it to be an easy answer. He’d unsettled their life and he wanted to tuck the corners back in neatly, wanted to take back the whole chain reaction he had started here. Eames had spent the entirety of their lives trying to be what Arthur wanted, and the instinct to fall back into it was overpowering. 

Then Arthur said, sounding sad and regretful, “Let me be a ‘we’ with you.” 

And it hit Eames suddenly that this wasn’t a problem Arthur had caused, not really. This was a problem _Eames_ had caused in not talking to Arthur immediately. This was the problem Eames had caused by forgetting they were a “we” together and just trying to be the “I” who Arthur would want. Eames was the one who had stopped being the “we” with him. How had he let himself do that? 

Appalled with himself, Eames stared at Arthur, at his dark eyes, at the hair that was in loose waves here in his dream. Arthur had always looked young, Eames had used to tease him about it, but now Arthur had fine laugh lines around his eyes, laugh lines that Eames liked to take some credit for, that Eames kissed fondly sometimes. Eames looked at Arthur and thought how he had always loved him to _distraction_ , how he had found himself doing whatever he could to keep Arthur smiling, and somewhere along the way he had subsumed himself into that, and how had he let that happen? 

And, meanwhile, Arthur was sitting there wondering how _he_ had let that happen. 

Eames curled his fingers into the collar of Arthur’s T-shirt and tugged him in, into the sort of deep, breathless kiss he felt like it had been ages since he had bothered to give Arthur. One of those kisses where you thought of nothing else. One of those kisses that stole your heartbeat out of your veins. One of those kisses where you were kissed back the same way. 

Arthur edged closer, as close as he could get, and Eames remembered suddenly how Arthur had used to kiss him as if he wanted to crawl right inside of him and never leave. When had they stopped _kissing_ like this? 

Eames pulled back, tugging Arthur’s shirt up and over his head, and they were in a dream, they could have just vanished it, but suddenly he wanted the reality of the motion, and Arthur seemed too fuzzy to be paying attention. 

Eames said, and meant every word of it, “If we were stranded down here, I’d spend every lifetime with you.” 

Arthur nodded and dove back into the kiss. “Me, too,” he mumbled into Eames’s mouth, and now he _was_ shedding clothing in a dream way, as if Eames tugging at his T-shirt had reminded him that he could do that. He was peeling Eames’s clothes off of him psychically at the same time that his clothing was dissolving. 

Eames had forgotten about the ease of dream sex. And he and Arthur had never actually done this, so the fact that Arthur knew about the ease of dream sex made him suffer a tiny stab of jealousy. All the things they hadn’t been together for, and Eames had been so determined to not miss anything from that point on. 

Arthur arched and groaned and murmured something, and for a moment Eames thought he was urging him on in French, which he sometimes did, and then realized, no, Arthur was saying _we_.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

The worst part about waking from a sex dream was the fact that you missed out on the post-coital cuddling. Not that Arthur cuddled, of course, but it was still a shock to wake and find himself sitting next to Eames instead of curled up on top of him.

Arthur looked at Eames, who concentrated on taking out his needle and then looked at Arthur and lifted an eyebrow and said, “Who taught you how to dream-fuck?” 

Arthur said, “We need to be honest.” 

And Eames, to his credit, didn’t pretend he didn’t know what Arthur meant. “I wanted to make you happy,” he said. 

“Right. You can’t do that by making yourself _un_ happy,” Arthur pointed out. “Because what makes me happy is you being happy. What makes me happy is _you_. You’ve always been what I want, you and Lucky. Fuck the rest of it, Eames. Whatever you feel like you’ve had to do in the background to keep me happy, _fuck_ it, I don’t need that, I just need you. And don’t you dare look at me as if you doubt that, because that isn’t fair. You’ve never given us a chance to even figure that out.” 

Eames was silent for a very long moment. Then he said, “I didn’t realize I was unhappy, Arthur. And I didn’t realize I was…I didn’t realize what I was doing until the moment I actually did realize it. It wasn’t a conscious choice on my part. It wasn’t like I thought to myself, ‘Arthur needs this; if I don’t give Arthur this, he’s going to be unhappy and go away.’ That wasn’t what happened.” 

“It’s because you’re a forger, Eames,” Arthur said, and he meant this, and he wondered why he hadn’t caught all of this so much earlier. “You do it automatically, become the person you think the other person needs. It doesn’t matter that we’re not in a dream, you still have that impulse.” 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Eames slowly. 

“I’m not going to take anything the wrong way,” Arthur said calmly, and made himself mean that. Eames loved him; that much was very clear. Arthur had to be able to tackle the rest of it. “Tell me.” 

Eames looked up at the ceiling, which was uncharacteristically furtive of him, and then he said, after a moment, “I really don’t recognize myself, Arthur. You might be right that I…I’ve lost sight, somehow, of who I… Maybe I never knew. I don’t…I don’t remember the last time I…” 

Arthur’s heart ached at Eames struggling for words like that. Eames, who spoke in paragraphs of eloquence so frequently. Arthur wanted to reach out and stroke his hair back off his forehead, but also recognize that touch might be counter-productive. Eames would react, respond, and get distracted. So Arthur said, “I’m going to say something a bit mad, and I don’t want you to dismiss it out-of-hand.” 

Eames looked at him with a soft smile. “‘A bit mad,’” he said. 

“It is,” Arthur insisted. 

“I just…love how British you sound sometimes. Go on. What’s your mad proposal, light of my life?” 

Arthur did let himself duck in to kiss the corner of Eames’s mouth at the endearment. “I think you should go steal a painting somewhere.” 

Eames lifted his eyebrows at him. 

“I mean it,” Arthur said. 

“I’m so out-of-practice, Arthur. I’d get myself thrown in prison.” 

“Okay. Then you should forge a painting. Or maybe go out and do some pickpocketing. I think you don’t remember who you are, so I’m going to remind you. I am going to remind you every step of the way that the person I need is _you_.” 

“By having me go on a crime spree?” 

“By giving you a break. A break from being this Eames you don’t recognize anymore. I’ll cancel my clients and—”

“Arthur, that’s not the solution. The solution to finding me isn’t to lose you—”

“No, the solution is to find a _balance_. We’re out of balance. We’ve tipped way over. So I’ll keep the house running, and you do whatever it is you feel that you need to do, and then we’ll reevaluate in a few weeks as to what it is we need to do to reach equilibrium.” 

Eames looked at him for a moment. “This is a plan.” 

“Yeah,” said Arthur, refusing to apologize for it. “I’m going to watch my tendency to run us like we’re a team, which is why I am _suggesting_ this plan and not ordering it, and why I’m trying to leave it flexible. But I’m not going to just stop _planning_. And I don’t think you’d actually want me to. The same way I don’t want to lose you. I always wanted _you_. Let’s find you again.” 

Eames was silent, looking back up at the ceiling again. “I don’t even know what I would do with myself.” 

“Maybe we should go away,” Arthur suggested, the thought suddenly occurring to him. 

“Where?” asked Eames. 

“I don’t know. Somewhere not here. There’s too much structure here. We need to break out of it.” 

“Lucky’s in school,” Eames said. “We can’t just—”

“Eames,” Arthur interrupted. “Can we take just a second to consider whether we would expect _you_ to be the one insisting on _structure_?” 

Eames hesitated. “I’m just thinking of Lucky and—”

“I know you are. And I love you for that. But I’m trying to remind you of who you are. I’m trying to shake you up. Let’s play airport roulette.” 

“With Lucky?” Eames looked skeptical. 

“She’d love the adventure, and you know that. That’s something she gets from you.” Arthur darted over and kissed Eames again, lightly, quickly. “Think about what you want to do. I’m going to get Lucky from school.”

***

Eames felt terribly at loose ends and wished Arthur hadn’t left. What was he supposed to do all by himself like this? He might as well have gone with Arthur to get Lucky. 

But he supposed that was Arthur’s point: that he had to figure out what he wanted to do, separate from Arthur and Lucky. 

Eames went up to his studio but really didn’t feel like painting. He liked painting—loved it, even—but he felt a little bit like the challenge had gone out of it. Like it had become routine for him. Like it was just one last thing scheduled in his day. He remembered when his days hadn’t been scheduled at all, when his days had been dealing with whatever chaos presented itself at any moment. Arthur was right, when had Eames ever been _structured_?

And maybe Lucky needed structure, but maybe Eames had tipped too far in the other direction. It was possibly another thing Arthur was right about, that they were out-of-balance. Eames’s life had become so dully scheduled that he was given a bunch of free time and didn’t even know what to _do_ with it. 

His mates from pre-dreamsharing days would have laughed at him. At least the dreamsharing mates would have wisely said, _Ah, yes, Arthur, you’d do anything for Arthur._ And he would. But here was Arthur saying, _I want to do everything for you back_. And Eames had to come up with what that might be. 

Eames’s phone chirped, startling him, and he realized he’d just been sitting in his studio sulking about all of this. 

It was a text from Arthur. _Taking L to the park_. They didn’t ordinarily go to the park after school. Eames ordinarily took them home. Already Arthur was throwing a wrench in the schedule. 

Eames stared down at the text. And smiled. 

***

“Arthur!” exclaimed Lucky, gleeful upon catching sight of him, and ran to him for an enthusiastic hug. Her ponytail was a disaster, and her tie was loose and crooked, and there was a smudge of crayon on her sleeve. 

Arthur grinned at her and said, “You look as if you had an excellent day at school.” 

“I did. And now can we go to the park, please, please, please, _please_? Misty’s mum said she could go to the park, and Jorge’s going to go along, too, and I think it would be an _adventure_.” 

“Well,” remarked Arthur, “do you know what’s something we live by in our household?” 

“What?” asked Lucky, looking genuinely curious. 

“One should enthusiastically embrace adventure.” 

Lucky giggled like Arthur was hilarious, and then shouted, “Misty! My dad says it’s okay!” 

Arthur winced a little at the volume of Lucky’s voice. “Shh,” he said fondly. “We can just walk over there, you know.” 

Lucky didn’t walk. She skipped. 

Misty’s mother smiled at him and said, “You must be Lucky’s other dad. I’m Kim,” and held out her hand. 

“Arthur,” he said, shaking it. “Very nice to meet you.” 

“I told Misty and Jorge I’d take them to the park. As a special treat to Jorge.” Kim lowered her voice. “You know, what with everything going on.” 

Luckily Arthur did know about everything going on because he’d eavesdropped on Eames that morning. “Good idea,” he said. 

“I’m happy to watch Lucky for you, too. She’s so sweet and never any trouble.” 

“Doesn’t take after her dads at all, then,” said Arthur jovially. He felt a little out-of-practice with this sort of small-talk charm, but Kim threw her head back and laughed like he was hilarious. “I’ll come along with you, though. May as well.” He thought maybe it would be good for Eames to have the extra time alone. So he texted Eames and let Kim lead the way, pretending that he knew how to get to the park. He probably could have found it, relying on his memorizing of Lisbon maps when they’d first moved there, but it was easier to let Kim lead. 

Kim said, “You’re usually at work, right? What do you do?” 

Arthur answered smoothly, “Insurance,” because it was bland and uninteresting and no one ever wanted to know more about it. 

Predictably, Kim said vaguely, “Ah, how nice.” 

Kim clearly frequented the park, because when they got there another mother hailed her over. Arthur didn’t really feel like keeping up the small talk. He’d had an emotionally exhausting day and didn’t want more of it. So he sat on a bench and watched Lucky play with her friends. She was the ringleader of the group, directing some sort of massive offensive in which invisible enemies on the playground were attacked. 

It took him a second to recognize the uneasy feeling of being watched, because it had been a while since that feeling had been relevant to him. But it was there now, unmistakable. His hand twitched and went lightly under his coat. He didn’t want to pull a gun in a park, and maybe he was just being paranoid, but better safe than sorry. 

Then Eames murmured in his ear, “Boo.” 

“Idiot,” said Arthur, relieved, as he relaxed. “I was going to shoot you.” 

“No, you weren’t.” Eames settled onto the bench next to him, radiating smugness. “You’re getting slow in your old age, sunshine.” 

“Shut up. I knew it was you and it dulled my reflexes.” 

“Fastest shot in dreamshare,” Eames said, grinning at him. “Look at you now.” 

And maybe, Arthur thought, it was the fact that Eames could finally see that Arthur had shifted in the intervening years as well, that it wasn’t just Eames flailing through these major life changes, but Eames’s eyes were so light, and crinkled at the corners in such familiar delight, that Arthur wanted to bury his nose in Eames’s throat but instead he forced himself to deadpan back, “I could kill you as you sleep.”

“I’d like to see you try,” snorted Eames. 

“You wouldn’t even hear me approach over the sound of your own snoring,” said Arthur. 

“You’re such a delightful antagonistic lying arsehole,” said Eames, and tugged him into a smiling kiss. 

Smiling kisses, Arthur thought. He’d missed those without even realizing they’d been gone. 

“Stop it,” Arthur said, even as he kissed him back. “We have to watch our child.” 

“Relax,” Eames said, but he drew away. “The other mothers will watch her for us. They’ll appreciate the show we’re putting on. We have been the source of much speculative gossip for ages.” Eames settled back, arm draped out across the back of the bench.

Arthur leaned into the hint of warmth behind him and wondered if he was beaming from ear-to-ear. He picked out Lucky, still organizing warfare on the playground and laughing uproariously as she did it, and Arthur thought how she was such a bizarre, unlikely combination of the two of them, and how had that happened? 

“Look at her,” Eames remarked, his voice soft with fondness.

“Yeah,” said Arthur, really looking at her, drinking in the miracle of her. “We made that.” 

And they hadn’t in the biological sense, but they really had in all of the senses that had counted since then. 

Eames said, sounding satisfied, “We did. Not too shabby, right?” 

Arthur swallowed and watched her and ventured, “It hasn’t been all bad.” 

“Darling,” Eames said, his voice swamped with sincerity, “it’s been better than I could have imagined. All of it.” 

Arthur nodded, feeling too thick to speak, to say anything to that, to say _But you haven’t been happy_ , to say _But I haven’t made you happy_. 

“Darling, look at me,” Eames said softly.

Arthur did, and remembered suddenly how much he used to look at Eames, how Eames had been his grounding in dreams, his beacon if he needed something to keep him steady. There had been Eames, and so often when everything was falling apart, their eyes would meet and Arthur would feel himself uncoil and relax. 

“You want me to be blindingly, dazzlingly happy,” Eames said, his voice still soft and tender. He cupped a hand around Arthur’s cheek gently. “You want me to never have a moment where I woke out-of-sorts, or needed a break, or just wanted to close my eyes for a second.” 

“I—” Arthur began, because, _yes_ , of course that was what he wanted, was that really too much to ask? 

“But how I see it, from my perspective, it isn’t a collection of moments where I was exhausted and discombobulated. It’s been an overwhelming collection of moments where I have been happier than I ever expected to be. All the imperfection is a blip, it’s all relative, because in the middle of all of this I have still been happier than I would ever have been elsewhere. And that’s what I need you to focus on. You want to be perfect. You always want to be perfect. You’re worrying about all the moments when things haven’t been perfect. But, darling, there are so many more moments where it _has_ been.” 

Arthur stared at him and experienced a moment where his perspective shifted, like being in someone else’s dream and seeing suddenly so clearly how the world was to them. He looked at Eames and saw, abruptly, what Eames meant. Arthur wanted him to be blindingly happy all the time. He didn’t want Eames to have to settle for a halfway-ness about it. But that was life, wasn’t it? For Eames, that was life. Eames was the realist. Life wasn’t always roses all the time, and that was fine because they had a higher percentage of roses than most people could have hoped for. 

But Arthur was the optimist who always wanted it all. Eames was absolutely, utterly, one hundred percent right. 

“You’re right,” Arthur choked out. 

“Hmm,” said Eames, the corner of his mouth tipping up. “I’m going to bottle this particular confession of yours.” 

“Shut up,” Arthur said. “I tell you you’re right whenever you’re right. I always give you credit.” 

“You do, actually,” Eames agreed ruefully, disarming Arthur. “You give me too much credit, actually.”

“No, I give you just enough,” Arthur countered. “You make me blindingly, dazzlingly happy. Why shouldn’t I—”

“It’s the optimist in you, love. You don’t remember the days when you cannot stand another minute with my inability to pick clothes up off the floor. You don’t remember the times when I make us late for something because, in your view, I don’t ‘care enough’ about the particular engagement. You are willfully forgetting the Great Swiss Watch Battle.” 

“Eames,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “All that stuff was just—”

“Momentary silliness. Right. Exactly. Sometimes I’m struck by how different this life is from what I imagined for myself and it gives me pause, but it’s a momentary blip.” 

“You feel like you’ve lost sight of who you are—”

“Or maybe I just changed. Maybe we both just changed. Maybe we evolved.” 

“Fine. But I don’t want you to feel like you—”

“I don’t.” 

“You didn’t even let me finish my sentence.” 

“Who I am is very fluid. It’s always been very fluid. But I know that I’m yours, and that’s a pretty good start.” 

“I want you to be more than that.” 

“I’m hers, too,” noted Eames, and gestured to Lucky on the playground. 

“I want you to be yours, too.” 

“I’m working on that,” said Eames. “I’m beginning to realize it’s a lifelong project of mine. I want you along for the ride until I get there. If you want that.” 

Eames looked nervous, which was ridiculous to Arthur. “Of course I want that.” 

“It might take me a while. I don’t think I’ve really…paid attention to the issue in a while.” 

“I’m okay with that. I’m very patient.” 

“You’re hilarious,” Eames said fondly. 

“I’d wait for you for a googolplex of years,” Arthur said, using Lucky’s term. “The most years I can imagine.” 

Eames leaned forward and kissed Arthur’s right dimple and breathed against his skin, “I love you so furiously much. Please never think that I don’t.” 

Arthur shook his head a little bit and was surprised when Eames didn’t move away but instead pressed his face into Arthur’s neck and breathed. A cuddle, Arthur thought. Closeness. Exactly what Arthur had felt he needed. And Eames needed it, too. He was going to do a better job of remembering that, Arthur thought. He was going to do a better job of remembering that Eames needed him as much as he needed Eames. 

“Eamesie!” exclaimed Lucky, and Eames straightened away from Arthur and smiled at her.

“Hello, poppet,” he said. 

Lucky leaped familiarly onto his lap and kissed his cheek. “Arthur picked me up at school.” 

“I know,” said Eames. “Did he do a good job?” 

“He let me go to the park afterward.” Lucky gestured to the playground meaningfully and frowned pointedly at Eames. 

“I know. He spoils you rotten, does Arthur. Whereas I am harsh and mean and cruel and unforgivably lazy.” 

“And handsome,” Lucky said, and Arthur realized that that was something Eames said to lighten his faults whenever he was confronted with them. Lucky had clearly picked up on that. 

Eames laughed and kissed her cheek. “Yes, and that. Did you have a good day at school?” 

Lucky nodded. 

“Your tie’s crooked,” Arthur told her, and leaned forward and fixed it for her. 

Lucky beamed between them, looking so unbearably proud to have them both there. 

Eames said, “Do you want to have ice cream for dinner?” 

“ _Yes_ ,” said Lucky fervently. 

“Excellent,” said Eames. 

Lucky suddenly narrowed her eyes and said, “Why?” Arthur thought of how he’d always been worried that he was making Lucky into a suspicious person. 

Eames said, “We’re celebrating.” 

“Celebrating what?” asked Lucky. 

Eames looked at Arthur and smiled. “Life,” he said. “We’ve got a pretty good one.”


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

“Please get your hand off my ass,” said Arthur, where he was sprawled on his stomach on the bed, flipping through the newspaper. 

Eames, sprawled out beside him, did not get his hand off his ass. “Lucky’s all the way on the other side of the house singing opera to your mother. I can hear her. She’s not going to be traumatized by my hand on your delectable arse.” 

“I’m not worried about Lucky. I’m worried about my father.”

“He’s not going to be traumatized, either,” said Eames negligently. 

“He’s right,” said Arthur’s father as he walked by the doorway. “It’s quite all right.” 

Eames laughed. 

Arthur rolled his eyes and shut the newspaper. “Everyone is ridiculous.” 

Eames gave Arthur’s ass a playful smack before removing his hand, still laughing. 

Arthur rolled off the bed and said, “I’m going to go be a serious human being now in the kitchen.” 

“The kitchen where our five-year-old daughter is currently singing _Carmen_? Is that the hallmark of a serious kitchen?” 

“Yes,” sniffed Arthur with dignity. 

Eames laughed again. 

And Arthur looked down at him and then suddenly straddled him and kissed him soundly. It was something of a project of Arthur’s, to make sure that he reminded Eames of how beloved he was, that it didn’t become automatic or taken for granted. 

Eames looked up at him and grinned and said, “Hi.” 

“I love you a lot,” Arthur told him. 

“I know,” said Eames. “You let me put my hand on your arse.” 

“Prick,” Arthur said.

“That, too,” smiled Eames, and Arthur nipped at that irresistible lower lip, and then rolled his way out of bed and into the kitchen. 

Lucky was coming to the end of her aria. Arthur had seen this act many, many times, so he knew exactly when to reach out and catch Lucky in her dramatic swoon at the end of the piece. 

She opened her eyes and grinned up at him in delight, while his mother clapped dramatically. 

“That was wonderful, Lucky,” she praised. 

“Thank you,” Lucky said, popping back up to her feet and executing a curtsey. 

“What’s going on in here?” asked Arthur. “Other than opera.” 

“Gram and I are making Christmas cookies!” exclaimed Lucky. “Except this is the boring part.” 

“I’m making the dough,” his mother told him. “Want to help decorate?” 

“We should get Eames in here,” said Arthur. “He’s the artist in the family. Eames!” 

“Don’t shout,” his mother scolded him. “Is it necessary to shout?” 

It wasn’t, but Arthur knew it would lead to him being scolded, and Arthur knew Lucky found that hilarious. 

“You’re getting in _trouble_ ,” Lucky told him, and burst into giggles. 

“Cheeky,” Arthur told her, and tugged at her ponytail. 

Eames came in singing the toreador song from _Carmen_ , and Lucky joined in, and Arthur shook his head at his mother in exasperation, but he knew he was smiling. Eames picked Lucky up and swung her around the kitchen and then ended the song by placing her standing on a kitchen chair. 

“What’s this?” he asked. “Halloween cookies?” 

“No,” said Lucky, and rolled her eyes at Arthur extravagantly, a shared look of _can you believe we love this guy?_

Arthur grinned and leaned over to pop a couple of chocolate chips into his mouth. 

“Easter cookies?” said Eames. 

“No,” said Lucky. 

“Birthday cookies?” Eames suggested. 

“Close!” encouraged Lucky. 

“Whatever could they be?” puzzled Eames. 

“Ask Arthur,” Lucky stage-whispered at Eames, sending a dazzling look Arthur’s way. 

Eames looked at Arthur, his eyes dancing with mirth. “What sort of cookies are we making, Arthur dear?” 

“Thanksgiving cookies,” said Arthur. 

“No!” said Lucky. “They’re _Christmas cookies_!” 

“Christmas cookies!” said Eames. “Oh, dear, that’s right, it’s almost Christmas.” 

“Did you give Santa our forwarding address?” Lucky asked with a frown. They alternated which family they spent Christmas with, and Lucky was very concerned Santa might get confused. 

“I had your other father email Santa,” Eames told her confidently. 

Lucky turned wide eyes onto Arthur. “Do you know Santa?” 

“Arthur knows everybody,” said Eames. “Arthur handles Santa’s insurance.” 

Lucky stared at Eames.

“North Pole insurance is a bitch, too,” continued Eames. “Especially with climate change.” 

Lucky narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you.” 

“Harsh,” Eames informed her. 

“Arthur, do you know Santa?” Lucky demanded. 

“All mommies and daddies know Santa,” Arthur’s mother assured her, as she started rolling out the dough on the table. “They have to leave him the key so he can get in with the presents.” 

“He comes down the chimney,” Lucky informed her, with that pitying haughtiness with which she viewed anyone who had not amassed the amount of knowledge that Lucky had. 

“If you have a chimney,” said Arthur’s mother. “Otherwise he comes through the door.”

Lucky appeared to consider this, then turned to Arthur. “Did you email Santa?” she asked, reverting back to her original concern. 

Arthur pulled his moleskine out of his pocket and flipped it open and walked over so she could see it. He stood next to Eames, comfortably close to his solid warmth, and showed Lucky the appropriate page, where he had indeed written, in the checklist of things to accomplish before leaving Lisbon, Email Santa. He’d also placed a checkmark next to it along with the rest of the stuff on the list. 

“That says ‘E-mail Santa,’” Arthur told her, pointing out the appropriate entry. “See the ‘E’? And then that’s how you spell ‘mail,’ and that’s how you spell ‘Santa.’”

“I know how to spell Santa,” Lucky said, taking Arthur’s moleskine into her small hand and studying it very closely. “You put a checkmark here. So you did it?” 

“I did,” Arthur confirmed gravely. 

“And what did he say?” 

“He said he can’t wait for you to open the gifts he’s going to leave for you at Gram’s and Poppa’s in California.” 

“And what did he say about your gifts?” asked Lucky, concerned, as she handed him back his moleskine. 

“He will also bring them here.” 

“And Eames’s?” 

“Also here.” 

Lucky, satisfied, turned back to her grandmother. “So we should make the Christmas cookies because if we don’t make the Christmas cookies, Santa will be grouchy and probably leave bad gifts.” 

“I think we should make Santa some eggnog with a lot of brandy, and that would probably improve his mood,” remarked Eames. 

“That can be arranged,” said Arthur, thinking of how many toys had to be put together on Christmas Eve, and that it might not be more efficient to be drunk while doing it but it would definitely be more fun. 

“Now,” said Arthur’s mother, “time to make some cookies.” 

She distributed cookie cutters and they spent a little while concentrating on their own creations. 

Eames said Arthur’s stocking looked “somewhat inappropriate,” and Arthur said good-naturedly, “Fuck you,” and his mother said, “Arthur, language, really.” 

“It’s okay, Gram,” Lucky assured her. “They have to pay me every time they say a bad word. I’m basically rich.” 

Arthur’s mother frowned at him. 

“I’m going to buy a leopard,” continued Lucky. 

This gave Arthur pause. “A what?” 

“A leopard. Eames said I could get one.” 

Arthur turned his attention to Eames. “You said she could get a leopard?” 

“I said if she could find a leopard to buy, yes, she could get a leopard. What do you think of _my_ stocking, petal?” Eames held up a phallic cookie that was much larger than Arthur’s cookie. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. 

His mother said, “Why didn’t you just ask Santa for a leopard?” which really wasn’t helping matters. 

“I think it will mean more if I earn it,” Lucky explained solemnly. 

“But you haven’t earned it,” Arthur pointed out. “All you have to do is listen to us say bad words.” 

“And it is a true trail,” said Lucky dramatically, her eyes as Eamesian-con-artist-y as Arthur had ever seen them. 

“A true trail?” said Arthur drily. 

“You mean ‘trial,’ poppet,” said Eames. “It’s a true trial.” 

“It’s a true trial,” said Lucky, and clasped her hands together melodramatically and fluttered her eyelashes. 

“I’m going to make some balls to go with my stocking,” said Eames. “You know. Christmas balls. Like you hang on the tree.” 

***

Arthur’s mother volunteered to give Lucky a bath, which left Arthur and Eames unexpectedly free until it was bedtime-story-time, so Arthur’s father mixed them drinks and they collapsed onto separate couches. 

“What are we going to do when Lucky comes home with a leopard?” Arthur asked. 

“Where is she going to get a leopard?” countered Eames. 

“Fuck, Eames, this is Lucky we’re talking about here. She’s going to find herself a fucking leopard and bring it home and you told her that was all right.” 

Eames was silent for a moment. “I think we should get Lucky a cat.” 

“And pretend it’s a leopard?” 

“No. But if we get a cat, then we can explain to her that, if she gets a leopard, it would eat the cat. And she’ll be attached to the cat by then, so she won’t want a leopard anymore.” 

Arthur considered. “What if she thinks she can train the leopard not to eat the cat?” 

“She would not take such a risk with a thing that she loves. This is Lucky. She straps all her stuffed animals into seatbelts when we drive places. She still has that ridiculous cat toy you bought her.”

Arthur smiled up at the ceiling, thought of how lost and clueless he’d felt in the face of Lucky, giving her a cat toy because he didn’t know what else to do. He thought of Eames, pale and drawn and so terrifyingly dependent on Arthur to keep them alive. He thought of cherishing so carefully the things that you love. 

Eames must have been thinking these things, too, because Eames said, “Hey,” to draw Arthur’s attention, and leaned over Arthur’s couch, apparently having rolled off his own. 

Arthur looked at him upside-down and smiled again. 

Eames leaned down and kissed him. 

Arthur said, “If we have this much trouble keeping a step ahead of her when she’s five, I don’t think we’re going to survive her as a teenager.” 

“Shut up,” Eames said, and kissed him again. 

***

“It’s a very important Eames family tradition,” Arthur said. 

“The Eames family doesn’t have traditions,” Eames replied. 

“This Eames family does. Seriously. You should do this with her. This should be your thing.” 

“It can be your thing, too.” 

“I know. But it doesn’t need to be. This can be your thing and I’m happy for it to be.” 

Eames studied Arthur and considered. He knew Arthur still worried that he wasn’t happy. He didn’t think Arthur worried he was going to walk out, but he could feel the fragility in Arthur’s actions sometimes, as if he wasn’t quite sure he was making the right move, as if he was fearing unintended consequences. 

That was Arthur for you, he knew, and he loved Arthur. So Eames did the best thing he could think of to do and kissed him almost constantly, whenever it occurred to him, very conscious kisses with teeth and tongue and smiles, not entirely appropriate all the time, but Eames lived in fear of falling back into absent kisses, of forgetting the wonder of Arthur kissing him back. 

And Eames was also very deliberate about being honest with Arthur. When he found himself falling into old habits, shifting himself to fit what he knew Arthur wanted, he was getting better about forcing himself to stop, to talk to Arthur instead. Sometimes it took him longer to reach decisions than it would any normal person, because of the effort it took him to tangle out what he actually wanted. 

Like now, with Arthur offering to take a step away and give him a bit of special space with Lucky, and Eames having to decide if that was what he wanted or not. 

Finally Eames said, “I think I’d like that.” And it was odd, because he didn’t want to be selfish with Lucky, but at the same time he did really want this time alone with her, just the two of them, not because it was responsible but because it was something fun and he wanted to enjoy her company. 

“Yeah,” Arthur said, and smiled with dimples. 

So Eames kissed his dimples. 

Arthur called, “Lucky?” 

“Don’t look!” Lucky screeched back. “I have my Christmas nightgown on! Gram is doing a fitting!” 

Lucky was designing a special Christmas nightgown. Arthur’s mother was helping her. Arthur and Eames were not allowed to see it. 

“I’m not going to look,” Arthur called back patiently. “But is the fitting almost done? You have to go with your father to learn a special British secret.” 

Lucky’s footsteps came flying down the hallway almost immediately. 

“Is that a Lucky I hear?” asked Eames blandly, as she arrived. “Or a stampeding herd of elephants?”

“A Lucky,” Arthur said, “but it is so difficult to tell the difference sometimes.” 

“What British secret?” Lucky asked him, ignoring that little exchange, her eyes shining with eagerness. 

“Such a secret British secret that none of these hopeless Americans would even understand it,” Eames assured her. 

Lucky, whose English was an odd blend of accents, changeable according to who she was speaking to, straddled English and American heritage proudly and happily. They had forged her dual citizenship, and she enjoyed being wholly each. She liked how it set her apart from Arthur and Eames, who in her eyes could never hope to achieve such uniqueness. 

She knew she was from Nicaragua, but that wasn’t on any official document for safety reasons, and Lucky considered that additional wrinkle of her heritage yet another stamp of her uniqueness. 

Lucky nodded wisely and turned to Arthur and his mother, trailing after her, and said, “It’s important British business.” 

“How very MI-6 of you,” said Arthur drily. 

Eames grinned and kissed him. “Bye.” 

Lucky said, “What’s MI-6?” 

“Code for ‘I have the cutest Lucky in all the land,’” said Arthur, and smothered a laughing, protesting Lucky in kisses the way he always had from the time of her babyhood. Eames, watching them, could not believe how much time had passed so unforgivably quickly. 

“Let’s go,” he said when Arthur’s onslaught was done, and held out his hand for Lucky, who took it readily and skipped next to him out of the house and over to the car. 

“So can I hear the secret yet?” asked Lucky eagerly, as Eames strapped her into her booster seat. 

“We,” Eames announced grandly, “are going to make mulled wine.” 

“Mulled wine,” Lucky repeated, sounding rapturous over it. “That sounds googolplex amazing!” 

“I’m so glad,” said Eames, dropping a kiss on the tip of her nose before he could resist it and then settling into the driver’s seat. 

“This is fun,” said Lucky from the back seat happily. “This is a good adventure.” 

As opposed to the bad sort of adventure, reflected Eames. “Yes,” he agreed. “A very good adventure.” 

After a beat, Lucky said, “What’s mulled wine?” 

***

“Don’t you dare come in and peek, Arthur Stanley,” said his mother. 

Arthur winced and thought how _Stanley_ was something he’d shed when he and Eames had chosen their new identities for Lucky. His mother didn’t know that and didn’t need to know that, but really? In what universe had “Stanley” been an appropriate middle name for him? Eames, who hated his own given names passionately, never teased him about it, because Eames was actually fairly good about not throwing stones when he lived in a glass house, but Arthur knew Eames had privately laughed himself silly over it. 

Arthur said, “I’m not trying to peek. I was wondering if I could talk to you for a second.” 

“Let me put Lucky’s nightgown away and I’ll be right out.” 

Arthur, appeased, walked into the living room, where his father was sitting reading a medical journal and drinking a Scotch. Arthur lifted an eyebrow at the Scotch. 

His father said, “It is prime drinking time in Lisbon, isn’t it?” 

“Good point,” said Arthur, and poured his own Scotch. 

“Everything okay?” his father asked. 

“Fine,” said Arthur, sitting at the table with his father. “Why would you ask?” 

“You manipulated Eames out of the house.” 

“Not really,” said Arthur, and then frowned. The truth was he’d wanted a moment alone with his parents, without Eames knowing, and so maybe that _had_ been manipulation. He’d also thought Eames wanted a special, fun Lucky tradition all to himself, but was this yet another way in which he was calling all of the shots and depriving Eames of his say? 

Fuck. 

“Relationships are exhausting,” he told his father, and took a sip of his Scotch a bit larger than he’d intended. 

His father regarded him very seriously. “Did you need a break from him? Because everybody needs a break now and then—”

Arthur shook his head. “No. No, that’s not it at all.” Arthur had actually tried very hard to maintain things separate from Eames because he’d been worried about that; the problem, it turned out, was Eames had been less good at the separate things and Arthur had failed to notice. “It’s—”

“All right,” his mother said, bustling into the room. “Secret nightgown project tucked away.” 

“Is the nightgown project driving you mad?” Arthur asked. “Because you don’t have to—”

His mother waved her hand at him dismissively at the same time his father said, “Arthur was just saying how relationships are exhausting.” 

“Dad,” Arthur said, because that wasn’t how he’d wanted to start this conversation and he wished he’d kept quiet about it. 

“It’s true,” his mother said, in her motherly advice tone, “they require a lot of work, but they should also be very fulfilling and make you happy, and if—”

“They make me happy,” Arthur said, hoping to cut off the crisis right there. “I’m very happy. That isn’t the—” Arthur caught himself and considered and thought no, maybe it was time to be honest. “Eames isn’t happy.” 

His mother reached out to take his hand and squeeze it, her face a mask of sympathy. “Oh, honey. I’m sure that’s not true.” 

“Did he tell you that?” his father demanded. 

Christ, thought Arthur, this was making everything worse. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Never mind,” he said. 

“He’s seemed very happy,” his mother said. 

“Yeah, he’s a good actor,” said Arthur, and tried not to sound bitter, but Eames _was_ , and that was what had caused this whole issue. 

“You two have been all over each other,” his father noted, with a huff of disapproval, like that had all been some kind of deception. 

“We’re… We’re trying. Look, that’s what I wanted to ask you. I wanted to get Eames a weekend away for Christmas. I thought we’d drive up the coast. I was wondering if you could watch Lucky for us.” 

“Of course,” his mother said, and smiled at him encouragingly, like he was some fragile thing. 

“I don’t want to impose too much,” Arthur said, because he _didn’t_ , “but I think maybe we could…” Arthur trailed off into an eloquent shrug. 

“Remember who you were before Lucky,” his mother suggested, still smiling. 

Yes, thought Arthur. And figure out if the people they’d been before Lucky could be together, since they never had been. 

“It’s no trouble,” his father said. “She’s a delight. And this thing with Eames isn’t your fault.” 

“Yes, it is,” Arthur said. “It mostly is.” 

“You think everything is your fault, Arthur,” said his father, so simply, like it was unassailable logic. 

Which made Arthur defensive. “I was supposed to make him happy,” he retorted. “I was supposed to make him the happiest person on the entire planet. And he’s not. Whose fault is that?” 

“He loves you, Arthur.” His mother dropped his hand and walked away, as if Arthur was wildly overreacting and barely merited a response. Arthur stared after her, as she walked over to the kitchen to start washing dishes. 

“That’s your entire advice to me on this subject?” Arthur said. “‘He loves me’? I already know that.” 

“Good,” said his mother, not really looking up from her dishes. “As long as you know that. He loves you. Let him love you. Just let him love you.” 

Arthur opened his mouth to say that nothing was as simple as that…and then thought, suddenly, abruptly, out of nowhere, of the one and only time Eames had walked out of his life. Because Arthur had told him to fucking go. Eames had been there, always, unchanging, while Arthur turned cartwheels all around him, and Eames just smiled and reached for him. Eames didn’t want more, it occurred to Arthur suddenly. Eames wanted _him_. 

“This trip is a good idea,” his mother continued. “Remind you that Lucky isn’t the only person in your house Eames is in love with.”


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Lucky got up on a chair to make the announcement. “This!” she shouted grandly, arms sweeping through the air, “is an adventure food! From England! Land of my father! My Eames father,” she explained to Arthur, “not you.” 

“Right,” Arthur agreed gravely. 

“You’re from here. This is your land,” Lucky told him. 

“Yes,” said Arthur. 

“Does it have adventure foods?” 

“Quinoa,” said Eames drily, and handed Arthur a goblet of mulled wine. 

Arthur looked at it and lifted his eyebrows. “This is a goblet.” 

“Darling,” said Eames. “Got to do mulled wine right. Make England proud. Here you go.” He handed another goblet to Arthur’s mother and then his father. 

Then he handed a goblet to Lucky as well. 

He sensed Arthur’s raised eyebrow behind him and turned and winked, because the wine in Lucky’s goblet was so watered down as to be juice. 

“It’s okay,” Lucky told Arthur, “because I’m British.” 

“ _Salud_ ,” Arthur replied, and clinked his glass against hers. 

“That is not English. Eames, is that English?” 

“To the Queen,” Eames said, and clinked his glass against Arthur’s. 

“Eames,” said Arthur’s mother rapturously. “This is delicious.” 

“It’s a special secret recipe,” said Lucky, beaming at herself and bouncing in her chair in excitement. 

“Okay,” Arthur said good-naturedly. “Let’s not spill your special secret recipe all over the table.” He moved Lucky’s goblet out of the way. 

“Finish up your wine, poppet, because it’s almost bathtime,” said Eames, and then hated himself a little bit for how strictly he kept them to a schedule. 

But Lucky didn’t protest, and Eames listened to her chattering happily to Arthur about their adventure that day, while Eames turned her bed down and settled all of her stuffed animals in their appointed places. 

Arthur came into the bedroom without her, looking damp himself. “She went to say good night to my parents. What’s your plan for the evening?” 

Eames lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “No plan. Bedtime and then…no plan. Why? Have we got plans?” 

“Not really,” said Arthur vaguely. 

“Hmm,” said Eames, and reached for Arthur to pull him in. “Trick up your sleeve, pet?” He slid his hand into the cuff of Arthur’s sleeve and wiggled his fingers playfully. 

“Just wondering who’s going to drink all that mulled wine you made.” 

“That sounds promising,” said Eames. 

“Because I was going to tell my parents they could finish it up,” continued Arthur blandly. 

Eames grinned at him and kissed Arthur’s answering smile. 

Lucky bounded onto her bed and said, “I’m ready for my story now!” 

“Hang on,” Eames told her. “This is a snogging interlude.” 

Lucky sighed heavily like she had the world’s most trying parents and collapsed backward onto the bed. “ _Snogging_ ,” she said in disgust. 

“We had better read her a story before she melts from exasperation,” said Arthur, and nipped Eames’s lips by way of apology as he moved away. 

“What’s that mean?” Lucky asked Arthur, propping herself up on her elbows. 

“What?” asked Arthur. 

“Melting from…what did you say?” 

“Exasperation. Exasperation is you when you’re being dramatic.” 

“I’m never dramatic,” said Lucky automatically. 

“My mistake,” said Arthur, deadpan. “Pick a book, _ma petite_.” 

Lucky selected a book and Eames took turns with Arthur reading pages, and then Eames tickled Lucky into the bed and kissed her forehead and told her he loved her, and she and Arthur exchanged their French endearments, and then Arthur and Eames walked out to the hallway together. Arthur surprised Eames by tugging his arm up and over Arthur’s shoulders and leaning into him. But Eames made no comment because this was probably Arthur making sure they were still okay. 

Arthur said, “Did you have a good time with her today?” 

“I had a magnificent time,” Eames said honestly. “It wasn’t necessary—”

Arthur put a finger over Eames’s lips and said, “I’m glad you had fun. Now.” Arthur stopped their forward movement in favor of backing Eames up against the wall. 

Eames lifted his eyebrows at him and slid his hands into the pockets on the backs of Arthur’s jeans to tug him closer. “Are you going to shag me up against this wall?” Eames whispered. 

“My parents are in the other room,” Arthur said. 

“I was going to be very impressed with you.” 

“You could never stay quiet enough for that to work,” Arthur said. 

“Oh, that’s right, I’m the one who’s really loud during sex,” said Eames. “And you’re quiet as a church mouse.” 

“A church mouse?” 

“What would you use for comparison?” 

“Something bigger than a church mouse.” 

Eames laughed. “Aw, are you offended, petal? Don’t worry, you’re definitely bigger than a church mouse. Probably at least as big as a chipmunk.” 

“Do you think this is sexy, this talk?” asked Arthur. 

“I don’t know,” said Eames. “I wasn’t sure sexy was the objective. You said I’m not quiet enough for sexy.” 

“I’m going to go and get the rest of your mulled wine,” said Arthur, pressing his lips against Eames’s. 

“Uh-huh,” said Eames, chasing him when he went to withdraw, pulling his lower lip between his teeth. 

“Get out your cards,” Arthur mumbled into Eames’s mouth. 

“My cards?” Eames echoed blankly. 

“I am going to beat your ass at poker.” 

“Only if I let you,” said Eames. 

Arthur smiled at him, dimples dazzling. 

***

On Christmas Eve, with great ceremony, Lucky revealed her secret nightgown project. It was a lovely gray pinstripe that Lucky had directed her grandmother to cover in neon yellow polka dots. 

“What do you think?” she asked, spinning around. 

Arthur said honestly, “I think it is the most Lucky thing in the entire universe.” 

“Me, too,” Lucky said, and pirouetted around the room. 

“But,” said Arthur’s father, “it’s probably time for little girls to go to bed so Santa can come.” 

“I’m not tired,” Lucky said, even though it was already past her bedtime. “And I have some questions I want to ask Santa.” 

“Write them out,” said Eames, “and we’ll ask Santa for you.” 

“I can’t really write yet,” Lucky told Eames, and then gave Arthur their look of solidarity in the face of Eamesness. 

Arthur smiled at her. 

“You should really get working on that, then, poppet. I mean, you are almost seventy-two years old.” 

“Eames!” exclaimed Lucky, giggling. “I’m only going to be _six_.” 

“Six?” asked Eames, taking Lucky sideways into his arms, as if she were a log he was carrying around. Lucky giggled in helpless delight. “Are you sure you’re only six? Are you sure you’re not seventy-two? I’m almost positive we found you seventy-two years ago.” 

“Are you?” asked Arthur drily, watching the pair of them. “Because I’m almost positive we found her _yesterday_ and I don’t understand how she got to be nearing six.” 

“If you found me yesterday, I would still be a _baby_ , Arthur,” Lucky told him over Eames’s shoulder. 

“Arthur’s hopeless at maths,” Eames told Lucky, and settled on the couch with her. “Come on, let’s watch _It’s a Wonderful Life_ with your grandmother until you get tired.” 

“I will never be tired,” Lucky proclaimed. “I won’t be tired for a googolplex of years.” 

“How old will you be in a googolplex of years?” asked Eames–the rare question that actually shut Lucky up for a second. 

“Can I get in on this action?” Arthur asked, and settled on the couch with them. 

Lucky immediately spread out to take up residence on both of their laps at once. “Do you really like my nightgown?” she asked. 

“I want one of my own,” Eames replied. 

“You’ll have to ask Grandma,” said Lucky. “Can we watch _Rudolph_?” 

“Yes,” Arthur’s mother agreed indulgently, and switched _Rudolph_ on. 

Lucky was asleep before Hermey the elf had even left to go out on his own. 

“Can we change this?” Arthur asked, head pillowed against Eames’s shoulder. “I hate _Rudolph_.” 

“We should put Lucky to bed,” Eames said, and Arthur knew this would be the practical thing to do, because they had a lot of gifts to put out, but Arthur was comfortable and warm and drowsy and maybe a little hungover from mulled wine, though he’d been denying that strenuously all day. 

“In a second,” Arthur said, yawning, as his mother found _It’s a Wonderful Life_ , which he’d seen a million times, so it wasn’t like he needed to have his eyes open to watch it. 

“Look at you,” Arthur heard his mother say. “Now you’ve got two of them to cart off to bed.” 

Arthur felt Eames brush a kiss into his hair. Arthur was going to say he wasn’t really sleeping, but it seemed like a lot of effort to say. 

“I’m the luckiest person on the planet,” Eames said. “No pun intended. Merry Christmas to me.” 

Arthur kept his eyes closed. 

***

Lucky went through her gifts like a whirlwind and then insisted on coming up with a schedule to play with each one throughout the day. 

“She is your daughter times a googolplex,” Eames told Arthur fondly, and then called to Lucky, “Before you disappear into some sort of toy spreadsheet, come here and let’s Skype with my side of the family for Christmas, hmm?”

Lucky obediently came dashing over, carrying a new unicorn stuffed animal, as Eames set up the computer. 

“Okay,” he said as it was ringing, and he pulled Lucky onto his lap. “Remember it’s ‘Happy Christmas’ over there, right?” 

The call was answered, and Arthur leaned down so he could be in view, and the room full of Eameses on the other end of the call shouted “Happy Christmas!” at them, and Arthur shouted the refrain back with Eames and Lucky. He exchanged some pleasantries with Eames’s family, and then Lucky insisted on carrying the laptop all around Arthur’s parents’ living room to show off her gifts, and Arthur left Eames supervising that production and went in search of more coffee. 

“She had a good Christmas,” Arthur’s mother remarked, from where she was peeling potatoes.

“Yes,” said Arthur, and pulled a couple of potatoes over to start slicing them. “Sorry, I didn’t see that you were already cooking.” 

“You were busy filling a picnic basket with train tracks,” his mother pointed out. 

Arthur chuckled. 

“We made the secret mulled wine,” Lucky was telling Eames’s family, “but don’t worry, we didn’t let the Americans see.” 

“The what?” Arthur could hear Eames’s family saying blankly over the call. 

“And I didn’t get a leopard because I’m going to get my own leopard,” Lucky continued. “With the money from how often Eames and Arthur swear.” 

“Arthur,” his mother murmured to him. “Really.” 

“Also, a leopard would be hard to put on a plane,” said Eames in the other room. “And we have to take a plane back to Lisbon.” 

“Good point,” Lucky said. “What will we do with the leopard when we go away?” 

“An important question that we should consider very seriously before getting a leopard,” said Eames. 

“Good luck talking her out of the leopard,” Arthur’s mother whispered to him. 

Arthur snorted. “Tell me about it.” 

***

Arthur found Eames after their heavy Christmas lunch sprawled in the setting sunlight on the patio. 

“Lucky’s passed out,” Arthur told him. 

“We were up at bloody three o’clock in the morning,” Eames replied. “She should be passed out. It’s Christmas Day and I am sunbathing. California is a strange place.” 

“Sunshine is very important, Eames,” Arthur said, walking over to him. 

“Christ, remember how miserable you were in the rainy season in Nicaragua? I have never seen any human being more resemble a drowned rat.” 

“I wasn’t miserable because of the rain, Eames,” Arthur said, settling on the chair next to him. 

Eames looked at him over the top of his sunglasses. 

“Not _entirely_ because of the rain,” Arthur amended. 

Eames chuckled and reached for Arthur’s hand and kissed his knuckles. “Merry Christmas, love.”

“Merry Christmas. Hey, I have another gift that I wanted to run by you.” 

Eames looked at him again. “You already gave me my gift.” 

“This is another gift. I talked to my parents about it, and they’ve agreed to watch Lucky for a couple of days. I thought we’d go away, you and me.” 

Eames’s gaze was steady on him. “Go where?” 

“I don’t have any plans,” Arthur said. He’d made a deliberate choice to make this as spontaneous as he possibly could. 

After a long moment, Eames grinned. “ _Darling_ ,” he said. 

“Sound good?” Arthur asked, pleased that Eames looked so delighted. 

“Fuck, yes,” said Eames. 

***

Eames sat up late, scrolling through maps of California and websites about tourist attractions. Arthur fell asleep to the glow of the laptop in bed and woke to Eames already out of bed. 

Arthur found him making pancakes for Lucky, who was sitting on the kitchen counter watching him. 

“Good morning, razzle-dazzle,” Eames said to him, and swept him up into a kiss. 

“Razzle-dazzle?” Arthur repeated. “That’s a new one.” 

Eames grinned at him and turned back to the pancakes. 

“Good morning,” Arthur said to Lucky, and kissed the top of her head. 

“Hi,” she said. “Eames is making pancakes.” 

“I can see that,” said Arthur, and looked back at Eames. “Did you sleep at all last night?” 

“A little,” said Eames. “I wanted to get an early start today, though. And I heard Lucky out here playing with her gifts, so I thought I’d make us some breakfast for when the rest of the household got up.” 

Arthur marveled at how genuinely excited Eames seemed. Arthur actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Eames in such an anticipatory mood. He said, “If you want to get an early start, I guess I should take a shower.” 

“Yes,” said Eames. “And comb your hair. It’s a disaster. Isn’t it, Lucky?” 

“Googolplex disaster,” said Lucky. 

***

Arthur crouched in front of Lucky and looked at her closely and said, “This is okay, right?”

Lucky nodded. She really did look sunny and untroubled. 

“It’ll only be a couple of days, and then we’ll be back,” said Arthur. 

Lucky said, “I know. You wouldn’t leave me,” like Arthur was being obtuse. 

Arthur smiled, because he’d devoted a lot of time over the past few months to making sure Lucky knew that. “Exactly,” he said, and kissed her hair and then stood and turned to his parents. “You’ve got our contact information, so if you need anything—”

“Go off,” his mother said, shooing him away. “Have fun.” 

Eames came in from throwing stuff in the car and picked Lucky up and turned her briefly upside-down, eliciting a cascade of giggles, before putting her back on the floor. “Raise hell for a few days, poppet,” Eames told her, and kissed her cheek. 

“No,” Arthur corrected. “Behave.” 

“Boring,” Eames stage-whispered at Lucky, and winked at her. 

There was another chorus of good-byes, and then they settled in the car. 

Arthur looked at Eames and said, “Okay. Want to tell me where we’re going?” 

“No fucking clue,” Eames replied cheerfully. 

Arthur blinked. “What?” 

Eames shrugged. 

“You were up all night.” 

“I was up all night looking at possibilities. Remember possibilities, Arthur? Remember how you used to sit with all of your little fucking yes-or-no bushes?” 

“Decision trees,” Arthur corrected him. 

“And then I used to say, ‘Fuck it, we’ll figure it out when we get there’?” 

Arthur looked at him. And Arthur said, “You’ve really missed this. I’m sorry. If I’d known how much you—”

“I didn’t know until yesterday, until last night, sitting up all night planning, and then I remembered: That’s not me. So where are we going, Arthur? I don’t know. Drive the car, and I’ll figure it out when we get there.” 

***

Where they ended up going was a place Arthur called “Fuck-Knows-Where-This-Is” but they found a bed and breakfast with the very important characteristic of having a bed, and Arthur hadn’t realized how long it had been since they’d had a truly spectacular fuck until he was sprawled out boneless in the bed feeling like the world’s best truck had just hit him. 

“Fuck,” Arthur managed. 

“Yeah,” said Eames, panting next to him. 

“I forgot you could do that.” 

“Fuck you,” Eames said good-naturedly. 

“Fuck me _like that_ ,” Arthur corrected him. 

“You’re such an arsehole,” said Eames. 

“Lucky you,” said Arthur, and looked across at him. Eames was also sprawled on his back, and he had his eyes closed, and he was smiling. Arthur swallowed and whispered, “I missed you.” 

Eames opened his eyes and turned his head and met his gaze. He was still smiling, a little rueful and sad around the edges. He said, “Do you remember when we first met?” 

“How could I forget? I thought you were going to get us all killed.” 

“Me, too. That’s the point. I thought I was going to get us all killed. And then you turned out to be you and I thought, ‘Never mind, I won’t get _him_ killed, I’ll just…keep him safe.’ I was only going to keep you safe.” 

“You did,” Arthur said. “I’m fine. I’m very safe.” 

“No,” Eames said. “I was going to keep _you_ safe. I didn’t expect to make it out myself.” 

“Make it out of where?” 

“Dreamsharing, Arthur. I wasn’t going to make it out of dreamsharing alive. I expected to die there, in some seedy den of iniquity somewhere, some thoroughly disgusting and unglamorous death, but I was utterly prepared for it. I was ready. Wherever it came to meet me, I was ready. I thought it _had_ met me in Nicaragua, I thought that was it. I didn’t count on you.” 

Arthur was silent for a long moment, aching for the Eames he had known back then, reckless to a fault, which had driven Arthur insane because Eames had never been as careful with the preciousness of his life as Arthur had wanted him to be. “I wish you had,” Arthur said brokenly. “I wish I’d let you know so much earlier that I was never going to let that be your end. Ever.” 

“You have been…the most unexpected, out-of-the-blue stroke of luck in my entire life, darling. And I’ve fucked it up with you and Lucky a million different ways—”

Arthur shook his head vehemently. “No, you haven’t.” 

“—but I don’t want to. I’ve never wanted to. I’ve had such a hard time locating myself in this life because you were never anything I would have dared imagine for myself. And I’ve spent all this time being…not knowing how to be…” 

“It doesn’t matter.” Arthur had thought he was never going to move ever again in his life, but he moved then, stretching out over Eames, looking down firmly into his eyes, making sure Eames understood this. “I know you don’t know what forge to settle on here, but all I’ve wanted all along was you. You’re the most infuriating, ridiculous person I’ve ever met, and I _miss_ that. I’m not going to leave, Eames. I am not going to take her and leave. We’re yours. I’m so sorry if I ever made you think for one second that we weren’t. We’re so very much yours. No forge required. Just you.” 

“Darling Arthur,” said Eames. “Love of my life.” 

And Arthur smiled and kissed him. 

***

In the end it happened like this: 

Eames, standing in a random tiny art gallery on the coast of California. 

Arthur, admiring the art closely. 

Arthur, saying something to him about whether they ought to pick some up as a memento, was there anything he liked, was there anything he was taken with? 

Eames, looking at the placement of the security cameras in the room, at the sight lines to the paintings, and marveling at how easy it would be to steal this art, to walk out of here with a couple of minor treasures. 

Driving back to Arthur’s parents’ house with a lovely little canvas of a tenacious ocean wave tucked in the backseat, Eames said, “I could have stolen that for us with almost no effort.” 

“I thought you were out of practice.” 

Eames snorted. “It wouldn’t even take practice. That would have been laughably easy.” 

“I bet their insurance company would love to hear that,” remarked Arthur, glancing in the mirror so he could change lanes. 

Eames, caught, snagged in the sudden possibility. _Possibilities_ , rolling away from him. Arthur and Lucky and Lisbon and art and _possibilities_. Eames said thoughtfully, “Yeah. I bet they would.” 

THE END.


End file.
